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…
Queen Victoria’s relationship with the railway began on 13 June 1842, when she drove from Windsor to Slough with Prince Albert, to make the historic first royal journey by train to Paddington. This relationship would continue throughout her life and endure, even beyond her…
Queen Victoria wrote in 1867 of the peace at Frogmore, in Windsor Great Park, in ‘this dear lovely garden’. By this point, she was six years into the widowhood, which would last until the end of her life. The gardens at Frogmore had a particularly sacred meaning for…
In the northern end of the gardens at Frogmore is a small building, the so-called Gothic Ruin. We know that Queen Victoria used her brick and tiled Tea House in which to breakfast, write, sit and take tea. She often worked outdoors on her papers in a tent set up close to the Tea House. The gardens at Frogmore were of profound emotional importance to the Queen, not only for the peace and…
Queen Victoria’s last journey by train took place on Saturday 2 February 1901. The Great Western Railway produced a beautifully illuminated train plan for the ‘Funeral of Her Late Most Gracious Majesty The Queen. Arrangement of Royal Train. Paddington to Windsor. 1.32…
“She was a rare flower, too delicate for this world, but rejoicing others with her fragrance and cheering them on the way…”
With these words, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia described the death of her friend, Julia, Countess Rantzau in a letter of 1901 to…
The ‘meeting’ between Marie Antoinette and the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has a fabled quality, not least because of the oft-repeated folklore that has grown around it. From the point of view of posterity, it is a fascinating moment to contemplate, when two legendary (Austrian) figures were in the same room, their biographical futures lying still before them.
I want to explore the facts…
A chance listing on the Public Catalogue Foundation Art UK, for an oil on canvas painting (35.8 x 30.7 cm) said to be of Russia’s last Empress, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, when she was Princess Alix of Hesse (1872-1918) led me to investigate this extraordinary artwork…
London has many plaques and memorials with royal connections but in fact, rather fewer statues. Some of these statues have interesting hidden histories of their own, of how they were made, how they came to be in the places that they are and why. Some of these statues may be…
It was not simply the wedding but also the welcome attending the arrival of a future royal bride in England which came to be the subject of public interest; it provided after all, the first glimpse of her in the country in which she would be princess and of which in some cases, she would be Queen, and therefore, the supposed mother of the continuing or new, royal dynasty.
Catherine of Aragon…
