Biography: UK's favourite grandmother

The Queen Mother on her 100th birthday

LONDON, England (CNN) -- It is as the Queen Mother that two generations knew Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

In her "uniform" floaty pastel dresses and coats, shell-shaped hats and pearls, she became "the nation's favourite grandmother" -- and a great-grandmother to nine herself.

After the death of King George VI in 1952, the Queen Mother wore black for a year and beat a private retreat to renovate and refurnish a castle she had bought in Scotland.

But persuaded, it is said, by Prime Minister Winston Churchill not to spend a life in mourning like Queen Victoria, she returned to public life as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Historian David Starkey says the title, while unprecedented in Britain, was taken from the well-established French Reine Mere to distinguish her from her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

Other widowed sovereigns' consorts had participated in public life, but Starkey says the Queen Mother did "something very special" with the role, capturing the national imagination.

Loyal subjects: The Queen Mother's fans were at the ready for her 100th birthday celebrations

He said: "There are of course two kinds of grandmother, the severe, domineering kind of which Queen Mary is perhaps an example, and the one who sometimes gets a bit tiddly and has a bet on the horses, which she has embodied."

The Queen Mother was the patron or president of about 350 organisations, including the Army and Air Force Women's Services, Women in the Royal Navy and the Nursing Division of the St John's Ambulance Brigade.

After the King's death, the Queen Mother made 40 official visits abroad, including one to Canada in 1989 to mark the 50th anniversary of her first visit there.

To a large extent, the Queen Mother continued to lead the life of an Edwardian lady. Drawing £643,000 a year from the public purse on the Civil List, she reputedly had a £4 million overdraft to help finance her multiple houses, cars and servants.

In London she lived at Clarence House near Buckingham Palace, weekending at the Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park.

Queen Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother) with her daughters Princess Margaret (left) and Princess Elizabeth, in 1941

In autumn, and in May for the fishing season, it was off to Scotland for an almost continuous round of hunting weekends and guests at Birkhall in the grounds of the Balmoral Estate and Caithness Castle of Mey in the far northeast.

As the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports she also had use of Walmer Castle near Deal in southern England.

Even late in life, the Queen Mother was often the life and soul of the party. At her 98th birthday she sat down for a private dinner party at 11:45 p.m. after a full day of walkabouts and celebrations.

Her 100th birthday in 2000 was marked by more than a month of parades and pageantry, including a 41-gun salute outside Buckingham Palace as the Queen Mother waved to cheering crowds from an open-topped carriage with grandson Prince Charles.

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