FeaturesHistory

Queen Victoria: The story of a royal statue

Of the memorials in Kensington Gardens, many share a close connection with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the most important to the latter being the ornate Gothic masterpiece designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, known as the Albert Memorial, which was unveiled in 1872 and restored in recent memory. The statue to the great doctor Edward Jenner (1749-1823) was revealed by Prince Albert and has…
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The Royal Family in 1846 - Queen Victoria's favourite family picture

‘The Royal Family in 1846’ by the fashionable German painter, Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-73) is an extraordinarily important image. Queen Victoria regarded it as the painter’s supreme achievement, although he painted the Queen on other occasions, most notably in 1843, in the famous ‘intimate’ portrait, which was Prince Albert’s favourite of her, showing her in a most private image…
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The lost royal 'zoo' at Windsor

Royal menageries became homes for the many animals that were given in previous centuries as political presents from their respective countries and thereby entered a life of exalted captivity, the nature of any zoo now being a controversial one. The oldest baroque zoo was…
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Madame Siebold, Royal Midwife: The woman who delivered Queen Victoria

One of the earliest names that occurs in the life of the future Queen Victoria is that of ‘Siebold’; although the name vanishes almost on the first mention. But no single name should be rendered insignificant just because it only occurs once. This is undoubtedly the case with Madame Siebold or more precisely, Charlotte Heidenreich von Siebold (1788-1859). Madame Siebold was an accoucheuse who…
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20 June 1837: Waking up Queen Victoria

On 20 June 1837, Princess Victoria of Kent was awoken in her bedroom at Kensington Palace, writing later in her journal entry for that day, in which significantly the proud new word ‘alone’ features intermittently (also underlined), we read: “I was awoke at 6…
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Portraits of Russian imperial women: Alix and Ella

The artworks by the fashionable German portrait painter and historical artist Friedrich August von Kaulbach (1860-1920) of Princess Alix of Hesse, later Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna and her elder sister, Elisabeth Feodorovna, ‘Ella’ Grand Duchess Sergei of Russia, provide, I think, a rare insight into these two princesses who would both marry into the Russian Imperial House of Romanov. Not…
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