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been fraught with planning, but now, at 10:45, there is a
break for a glance over the weekend’s bedroom situation.
Georgia has an inventory in front of her, titled guest
rooms. Next to fuchsia room, she scribbles “Sophie and
Bruce Robinson” (the iconic Withnail and I writer). “Okay,”
she says. top pigeon hole and bottom pigeon hole are
“for the Fox children. I’m going to put Stella Tennant and
her daughter Iris in Caroline’s Room and the Edinburgh
Room next door.” Eventually the list is complete—valu-
able information that will be distributed to the butlers
and housekeepers. When Robin White, the head butler,
appears with a tray laid with two delicate 1930s porcelain
teacups decorated with the Beaufort crest, a silver teapot,
and shortbreads, asking, “What time would you like lunch,
Ma’am?,” I feel as though I have been transported into a
Nancy Mitford novel.
But Georgia is no Mitford fantasy. A whip-smart,
Oxford-educated classicist and mother of two (Hope, 21,
and Harry, 22, with former husband Toby Coke), she has
worked since she left university, first at the BBC, then as a
CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY
above: The duchess (in Valentino Haute Couture) in the Warm
Conservatory, its walls climbing with Millfield Gem, a rare hybrid
ivy pelargonium. right: The round swimming pool, with its
soaring fountain, in front of the Orangerie.
