Having given several royal performances before George III and Queen Charlotte, the boy Mozart’s sonatas for keyboard and violin K10-15 were engraved before the end of 1764, dedicated to the musical Queen: ‘Six Sonates pour le clavecin que peuvent se jouer avec l’accompagnement de violin our flaute/traversiere/Tres humblement dediees/a sa Majeste Charlotte/Reine de la Grande Bretagne/composes…
Hair works like a symbolic thread throughout a person’s life history. For Queen Victoria, this was no exception. Indeed, for a royal personage, hair plays a massive part in ceremonial display and formal dressing as well as private ritual. The role of royal hairdresser is…
For Queen Victoria, the number fourteen held a terrible power. This date, the ‘14th’, could seem to haunt the Queen like the shadow of death. Much as she later tried to reclaim it as a sacred date, she beheld it with an almost mystical sense of dark fascination and…
In Berlin, there is a missing queen. Her burial place in the historic Hohenzollerngruft [Hohenzollern vault] in Berlin Cathedral is disputed and may be lost. Elisabeth Christine, Frederick II’s (‘the Great’) unloved queen was a victim of historical banishment, in Frederick’s lifetime at least. Metaphorically, she remains in his shadow. Unlike the husband she revered, Elisabeth…
In 1888, a year whose numbering Queen Victoria thought odd (‘Never can it be written again!’), her daughter, the Princess Royal and Crown Princess of Prussia, had become German Empress, prompting the proud words from her mother: ‘My OWN dear Empress Victoria… may God…
A fond tradition arose in the lifetime of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, Queen Victoria’s two-time Prime Minister, namely that of his receiving flowers, often primroses from the Queen. To Disraeli, Queen Victoria was the ‘Faery’ – his endearing name for his…
In the Western manuscripts collection held at the British Library are what are known as the Boyd Carpenter papers, Vol. V, Add MS 46721: 1884-1917. This remarkable collection of documents contain letters written in English from or on behalf of various crowned heads of Europe or their consorts, as well as other members of Europe’s ruling families. These letters were written to William Boyd…
The wedding cakes in Queen Victoria’s family were magnificent examples of edible ceremony. Once they reached the age of photography, they were faithfully recorded for posterity. These images still have the power to enchant today, even in long ago albums. Just looking at…
A charming photograph taken by Mary Steen in the Queen’s Sitting Room at Windsor on 21 May 1895 shows an elderly Queen Victoria knitting or crocheting, sat with her youngest daughter, Beatrice, Princess Henry of Battenberg, who dutifully reads the newspaper aloud to her…
Queen Victoria had twelve bridesmaids. What do we know about them? What did they wear? Certainly the Queen – as might be expected – had a greater number of bridesmaids than her daughters would at their weddings, eight being a recurring choice. We can see them clustered in pairs in Sir George Hayter’s large painting The Marriage of Queen Victoria, 10 February 1840, gathered respectfully…
