“Mary Queen of Scots”. These were the words I overheard from a visitor, passing their comment on the magnificent canopy tomb in the south aisle of the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey, erected on the orders of James I to house the remains of his mother, transferred from their first burial place of Peterborough Cathedral to the Abbey in 1612. However, tombs can tell only part of the truth…
“Dear old Sandringham, the place I love better than anywhere else in the world…” were the words which King George V used to describe the Norfolk retreat, beloved by four generations of the British Royal Family since 1862; it was a sentimentechoed by…
“That’s the tomb of Queen Elizabeth the First”; this was the remark I heard when I last visited Henry VII’s Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey. These words –unquestionably correct – confirm that here was the tomb of…
The experience of royal childbirth in the Tudor period was perilous at best, the attitude towards it both anxious and obsessive, most especially because the weight of its outcome would concern the matter of the succession. This is a crucial case in point that royal sex was above all, dynastic. Not only did the royal female undergo the ordeal with the knowledge of this vital importance, but the…
It is hard to imagine British history without Queen Victoria. So deeply has she made an impression on British history andbestowed her name upon anera that we could be momentarily forgiven for thinking that she had always existed. During her reign, she oversaw a…
In a press release on Friday 21 July, the Royal Collection Trust announced that a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales would be made in the form of a special display in the Music Room at Buckingham Palace, as part of the Summer Opening, to mark the 20th anniversary of her…
The foundation stone for No. 1 Royal Crescent – the first of what would become the glorious Bath stone symmetrical terrace of 30 houses in the city of Bath – was laid on 19 May 1767. The year 2017 will mark exactly 250 years since this iconic symbol of Georgian architecture – largely unchanged – was built to the designs of John Wood the Younger between…
The royal bedwas a symbol of power as well as being a powerful symbol.Almost likea throne, it ultimately stood forstatus and royal authority, providingthe background for such ceremonies as the monarch’s ‘lever’ and…
The Grade II* listed mansion of Bentley Priory in Stanmore, in the London Borough of Harrow, is best known for the vital role it played during the Battle of Britain when the building formed the setting for Headquarters Fighter Command. The Priory remained an RAF base until…
At night, a historical attraction somehow acquires an entirely different authenticambience, with the sense of its past rendered more palpable by the feeling of exclusivity – there is a sense of being a private guest at a bygone court. Entering any residence at night emphasises this idea, something which the sequence of a royal apartment’s series of…
