During the first days of World War II, when King George's mother was sent from London to the comparative safety of the ancient Gloucestershire estate of Badminton, one of the first things to catch her eye was an untidy tangle of hawthorn. She promptly resolved to clean it up, and every day thereafter from lunch until tea time, Britain's Queen Mother led a party armed with pruning shears, billhooks and mattocks, against the undergrowth. "No one who came to Badminton, whatever their rank or position, was exempt," says her latest biographer. "Queen Mary . . . worked with a will herself,...
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