FeaturesHistoryInsight

Personal items of Queen Victoria acquired by Historic Royal Palaces

By
2nd November 2018
Some personal items belonging to Queen Victoria have been acquired by Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity which maintains Kensington Palace, ahead of the bicentenary of the Queen’s birth in 2019, which the palace will celebrate with a new exhibition and re-presentation of the visitor route, as announced in a Historic Royal Palaces press release on 3 September 2018. Kensington Palace…
Read more
FeaturesHistory

Queen Victoria's Widow's Cap

By
31st October 2018
The white caps worn by Queen Victoria have – correctly – come to be regarded as a symbol for her widowhood. They represent one of the few contrasts in colour to the deepest mourning that she adopted after 1861, as a declaration in textile, of the colossal…
FeaturesHistory

A Staircase and a Queen: Making Royal History

By
4th October 2018
Queen Victoria’s accession began with a staircase. Fascinating to consider is the fact that this very staircase survives at Kensington Palace and may be seen today. A staircase had also played a part on another historic day in Victoria’s life, much later. On 10 October 1839, the young Queen stood at the top of the staircase at Windsor Castle, at half-past seven in the evening, to receive her…
Read more
FeaturesHistory

Becoming Victoria

By
3rd October 2018
Hanging in the magnificent Waterloo Chamber at Windsor is the state portrait of King William IV in his Garter robes with the Garter and Bath collars, painted by Sir David Wilkie for the King in 1832, that parliamentary historic year of the Reform Act and also the year in…
FeaturesHistory

Queen Victoria and royal widowhood

By
1st October 2018
For some, Queen Victoria remains etched into the popular memory as the monochrome royal widow, dressed in black for the rest of her life, a black occasionally relieved by the enormous white handkerchiefs which she often took around with her, or the little lace cap, that…
FeaturesHistory

Queen Victoria's dolls

By
29th September 2018
The wooden dolls of the future Queen Victoria have long been the subject of fascination. Perhaps this is because we are fascinated by something so strongly associated with the childhood of that Queen who to a large extent, still remains in the historical imagination as either the monochrome royal widow or the elderly Queen-Empress of the Golden and Diamond Jubilee. Several of these dolls are…
Read more
FeaturesHistory

Cards from Queen Victoria's children

By
17th September 2018
Some of the earliest Christmas cards to survive in the Royal Collection date from the first half of Queen Victoria’s reign. These were handmade by Queen Victoria’s children and are typical of the sentimental nineteenth century; although in the case of the Queen’s…
FeaturesHistory

Breakfasting with Queen Victoria

By
15th September 2018
Across the Quadrangle at Windsor Castle is a room, clearly visible, jutting out in a pentagon shape amongst the jigsaw of the Clarence, Queen’s, Augusta, York, and Lancaster Towers and King George IV Gate. Part of the private apartments, it was merely called what it was: The Oak Room or Oak Dining Room. The room is important. It was the room in which Queen Victoria breakfasted on occasion…
Read more