FeaturesHistoryInsightQueen Elizabeth II

The Queen's London Birthplace: 17 Bruton Street

On 21 April 1926, Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born in London, at the Mayfair home of her maternal grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne. The former house in which she was born was at No. 17 Bruton Street and although the house no longer exists, the site is of great historical interest and a focus on this building is all the more timely, as we remember the birth…
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History

Queen Victoria's wedding dress - a huge contrast to the deepest black of her mourning dresses we are used to seeing

Queen Victoria’s weddingdress is a powerful symbol of what she would refer to in her journal as the ‘happiest day of my life’.Most probably, it represents more than any other item of clothing or object, the Queen’s identity as a royal bride. Certainly, she chose to wear it again in 1847, when she was painted in her wedding attire by the fashionable portraitist Franz Xaver…
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The christening of Queen Victoria

Unlike the christenings of Queen Victoria’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the christening of the future Queen is an event about which far less is known. It was not the subject of a painting, nor was much written about it as the ceremony itself was a strictly private one, by order of the Prince Regent. Much later, the many baptismal services which were performed within The…
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The Fitness-Empress

The spectacular beauty of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898) was a reputation which, once created, had to be determinedly maintained. This was only achieved through rigorous beauty and exercise regimes, which she adopted as her personal discipline. The Empress, who…
Features

The beauty regime of a beautiful Empress

Empress Elisabeth of Austria was one of the most beautiful women of nineteenth-century Europe, yet this beauty was the determined result of intensive labour, at considerable cost. The cult of that beauty which astonished her contemporaries became Elisabeth’s personal myth…
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'My dear Grandmama': Queen Victoria's memories of her grandmother

Who was Augusta Caroline Sophia, Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld? Born a Princess of Reuss Ebersdorf (1757-1831), she was Queen Victoria’s ‘dear Grandmother’. In 1872, Queen Victoria wrote down a short memoir which survives at Windsor, which was reprinted in the three volumes of Queen Victoria’s published letters, edited by A. C. Benson and Lord Esher (1908). We do not know…
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