By 1970, with a stable of a dozen racehorses that was costing more than £1million a year, and her Aberdeen Angus herd at the Castle of Mey, she was overspending her official income by millions and having increasingly to be bankrolled by her daughter, the Queen.
Elizabeth II, deeply concerned by the escalating cost of her mother's life, was distressed when Edward Heath's Conservative cabinet rejected a proposal from the Palace for a 100 per cent increase that would have doubled the Queen Mother's Civil List payment from £70,000 to £140,000, saying that it "might well lead to embarrassing criticism of the Royal Family."
In 1972, the Civil List payment rose to £95,000. By 1990, it was £334,400, and then rose to its final figure, £643,000, but even this was never enough, in spite of a 100 per cent tax exemption from the Treasury for many years. The wages bill at Clarence House alone was £1.5 million.
Elizabeth's undiminished regal lifestyle and chaotic personal finances resulted in a massive overdraft at Coutts, the royal bankers, causing anxiety to her financial advisers, to the Queen, who subsidised her mother to the tune of £2million annually, and to her eldest and favourite grandchild, the Prince of Wales, who also subsidised her out of his own pocket.
As the Queen Mother never carried money, and had only the haziest notion of how much anything cost, the frantic efforts of her courtiers to control her spending resulted in failure.
Her £643,000 Civil List annuity was over-spent eight times in every year, and indeed was less than half what it cost just to employ the 60 servants at her official London residence, Clarence House.
Even in the last year of her life, when old age and infirmity curtailed the number of her engagements and public appearances, the Queen Mother managed to spend £4 million more than her official income.
The Queen paid her mother's debts and inherited her entire estate, valued at some £70million. It included the prized Monet and other valuable works of art, as well as Mrs Greville's fabulous jewels, a priceless Faberge egg collection and all her racehorses.