This mostly Protestant invention has little to do with our tradition and turns us into passive participants
The queen consort of George V was consistent in her sense of duty and unswerving in how she expressed it. Crowned with dignity and corseted with confidence, at 5ft 6in, Mary of Teck was the same height as the king, but they were called George the Fifth and Mary the Four-Fifths.
Of her many benefactions to the empire, perhaps her most conspicuous was her habit of removing climbing ivy from regal residences and public buildings. Her detestation of the ivy was a lifelong obsession, quite the opposite of Queen Anne’s love affair with boxwood. Even in the dark days of the Blitz when she was billeted outside London in Badminton House, home of her niece, the Duchess of Beaufort, and forced by wartime exigencies to reduce her private staff to 52, Queen Mary led them in tearing down the ivy from the house and surrounding walls, like Samson bringing down the Temple of Dagon, with not a single hair out of place.
