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A Portrait of Princess Alix of Hesse

A portrait of the toddler Princess Alix of Hesse by the Austrian painter George Koberwein caught my attention back in 2004. Examining how it came to be painted was a source of great interest to me, not least because the picture that he produced of the baby princess, not quite two years old, is such a charming study. Portraits from such an early period of Princess Alix’s life are rare; she was…
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Banbury Cross and a Royal Wedding

Banbury Cross is of course, synonymous with local Oxfordshire folklore for many, because of the popular rhyme which has a ‘fine lady’ riding to it on her cockhorse. Indeed, this is the main reason why many people know of the existence of the Cross at all. Far less known…
FeaturesHistory

Flora Danica and a Royal Wedding

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 from the Government and People of France for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, in 1947. A plate sometimes…
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The bells of Westminster Abbey

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…
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Queen Victoria's honeymoon at Windsor Castle

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 William IV and her mother, the Duchess of Kent; it was also where the father she had never known, Edward, Duke of Kent, was…
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Queen Victoria and Cliveden

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…
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The Quire at St. George's Chapel, Windsor

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 weddings as well as royal burial. The marble floor of the Quire carries with it quite literally, the strata of centuries and…
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