In addition to the handful of tombs of England’s medieval kings and their queens consort clustered close to or around the great shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey, one royal vault is quite unlike the rest.
Some tombs are harder to find in the first instance. The first Stuart King of England James I, for example, shares mortal eternity in the resplendent Torrigiano tomb designed…
In addition to the private gifts exchanged at royal weddings were also those public gifts given on behalf of a nation. Either to accompany its native bride on her marriage, or increasingly, to take the form of diplomatic presents, such as the Sevres porcelain dinner service…
First and foremost, we think of bells as something we hear and don’t see. The bells of Westminster Abbey now mingle in between the great soundscape of London noise and the busy restlessness of Westminster, blending the secular with the divine, much as they have done for…
In St. Thomas’ Church, Newport on the Isle of Wight, stands an extraordinary monument, touching in its simplicity. It was erected over the tomb of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I (1635-1650). This beloved royal child was immortalized as such by Van Dyck in his great portrait of the five children of Charles I, in which the future Charles II stands at the centre, his left hand resting…
Following her wedding at St James’s Palace to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha on 10 February 1840, Queen Victoria drove to Windsor for her honeymoon. Windsor had mixed associations for the Queen. It was the place of the famous contretemps between her uncle, King…
Praised by Alexander Pope in his Moral Essays as possessing a ‘proud alcove’ in which one might happily be ‘galant and gay’, the great house of Cliveden, Taplow, where Meghan Markle spent the night before her wedding to Prince Harry, was visited by Queen Victoria in…
Given the inseparable links between music and the British Monarchy, it naturally follows that the music chosen for royal weddings reflected both the importance of the occasion as well as the personal taste of the monarch. Whether it was the splendour of Handel’s marriage anthem ‘Sing unto God’ for the wedding of Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1736 or the Chorale composed by Prince Albert…
The Quire of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor is an area extraordinarily rich in the history of the English Monarchy, yet this sacred and mystical space in the Chapel enshrining the Order of the Garter – the Order’s spiritual home – is as much associated with royal…
On 21 September 1662, Samuel Pepys entered the following words into his Restoration diary: “The Queen coming by in her coach, going to her chappell at St. James’s (the first time it hath been ready for her), I crowded after her, and I got up to the room where her closet…
The portrait by the Parisian painter Jean-Marc Nattier of the 17-year-old Princess Isabella of Parma, (1741-1763) – the best known that was made of her – seems in some ways to symbolise her short life. Today it is kept in the vast collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the city of Isabella’s imperial marriage. The painting is stored in the Gallery Depot and is not…
