On 27th August 1979 Her Majesty The Queen’s cousin, LordMountbatten, was tragically killed by an IRA bomb blast whilst on his boat in Ireland.
It wasn’t just Mountbatten who perished in the boat; one of his twin grandson’s, Nicholas, and a local boat boy, Paul Maxwell, also died as a result of the bomb explosion.
Another passenger on the boat, the Dowager Lady Brabourne, died the…
Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester was born on the 26 August 1944; the youngest grandchild of King George V and Queen Mary, and the younger of two brothers born to Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester and his wife, Princess Alice. Shortly after his birth, he went to Australia…
The Princess Royal is often said to be the ‘hardest working’ member of the British Royal Family and has a reputation for being a formidable and forthright personality. Seen widely as very much her father’s daughter, Her Royal Highness is a popular character and a…
On1
May 1876, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress Of India after discussion with
Prime Minister of the day, Benjamin Disraeli led to Queen Victoria wanting a
title boost after her daughter became Empress Of Germany. From 1876 until the
Empire Of India was disbanded in 1947, British Monarchs were styled as
King-Emperors and Queen-Empresses.
This is
the only instance in British history…
Frederick II, accorded the epithet ‘the Great’ already during his own lifetime, had in fact, a whole other life after death, aside from his legacy. The great King’s legend stalks the eighteenth century like a gigantic historic shadow, much as the oversize silhouette of…
In the British Library five letters from Princess Alix of Hesse, later Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia (1872-1918) are preserved. Initially, I thought there were seven letters of hers at the British Library, but further research has enabled me to establish that these…
Prince Michael (b. 4 July 1942) is the younger brother of the Duke of Kent and paternal first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. As a five-year-old, he was a pageboy at the wedding of the then Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. He was educated at Sunningdale School and Eton, before entering the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, during his life he has always been active in learning languages and…
On the upper floor of the Swiss Cottage at Osborne, a rustic structure carved with Biblical texts in German and built behind the individual garden plots belonging to each of the royal children, today’s visitor finds this large room set as if for tea, with napkins turned to…
The first and only time that the boy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited London occurred between 1764-5, at about the half-way point of the Mozart family’s monumental European Grand Tour, which was to prove pivotal in Wolfgang’s developmental process as a composer, the…
As Royal Ascot approaches, horse racing fans begin to anticipate the winners and losers of the event. But one of the main features of Royal Ascot is, of course, the attendance of the Queen and members of the Royal family. As the name suggests, this competition has a rich royal history, but it’s only actually called Royal Ascot when the Queen attends – here’s how Ascot’s heritage ties in…
