FeaturesHistory

A Brief History of Frogmore Cottage

With the announcement that Frogmore Cottage will become the residence of The Duke and Duchess of Sussex at Windsor, it is perhaps interesting to briefly review Frogmore Cottage’s history. Contrary to popular imagination, it is not the first time that the building has served as a residence for royalty. ‘Bark writes that you offer me a Cottage at Windsor. Words fail me to express all I feel…
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A Pearl Earring and Imperial Russia

Displayed as part of the London Science Museum’s exhibition on the Russian Imperial Family, The Last Tsar: Blood and Revolution is a pearl earring. This extraordinarily poignant object has its own silent story to tell, concerning the fate of the Romanovs. Believed to have…
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Ella: The birth of Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna

‘Saw good Mrs Clark, returned from Darmstadt, who gave me an excellent account of Alice, the Baby & dear little Victoria’(Quoted in Charlotte Zeepvat, From Cradle to Crown, 13). With these words, Queen Victoria recorded in her journal for 13 December 1864, that she had seen Mrs Clark, the nurse who had attended the confinement in Darmstadt of her second daughter, Alice, Princess…
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An Imperial Russian summer at Windsor

The visit of the future Tsar Nicholas II to Queen Victoria in the summer of 1894 has a fabled quality; it took place a mere two months after his engagement to Princess Alix of Hesse in Coburg. This visit has a special poignancy when viewed through later eyes; we know of…
History

'Dearest Mary': Letters from the last Tsarina

‘What sorrows this last year brought us, what endless anxieties, what worries and losses – God grant the new year may be a calmer and happier one for the whole of dear Russia. Sleep well and peacefully…’ With these words, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918) closed a letter on New Year’s Eve 1900 to Princess Marie Bariatinsky, one of the few close friends of her early years as…
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Princess Alix of Hesse's visit to Malta

Princess Alix of Hesse visited Malta in 1890. Little would appear to have been recorded about it, although it is possible to piece together some details of the trip from surviving accounts, biographies by those that personally knew her and from extracts of letters she wrote…
FeaturesHistory

Royal Cousins and Imperial Russia

Princess Alix of Hesse – as the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna was known before her marriage to the young Tsar Nicholas II in 1894 – visited Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park on several occasions, as the residence of her maternal aunt, Princess Helena of Schleswig-Holstein and her cousins. Cumberland Lodge made a circle for Princess Alix around this part of her English family. She was…
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