Her brother was the noted prankster Horace de Vere Cole (1881–1936), who inherited the family seat some time after 1889; it was later owned by John Huston and then Merv Griffin and is now known as St. Cleran's House.

This marked the beginning of a public career in which Anne Chamberlain was to be Neville's constant companion, helper and trusted colleague, and to share in full his interests in housing and other political and social activities after his election as MP for the Birmingham constituencies of first Ladywood and then Edgbaston.

The couple had many tastes in common: a love of music and art, of books and flowers (while at 10 Downing Street, she created a bright border where previously there had been some sad London shrubs), and especially of the countryside and wildlife.

In his biography, Keith Feiling wrote:Of what he felt of his debt to his wife, he often spoke in public and, as it had been at Ladywood, so he repeats in a letter of 1937 on becoming Prime Minister: "I should never have become P.M. if I hadn't had Annie to help me.

In the last season, Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, informs her son Robert that Anne's godfather was her husband and she hopes that connection will help convince Chamberlain, as Minister of Health, to visit the estate and take her side in a dispute over a local hospital.