In the last days of August 1968, the
Royal Family made a sad and surprising announcement. Princess
Marina, Duchess of Kent’s health was ”giving rise to anxiety”
following the diagnosis of an inoperable brain tumour. There
was sympathy for the duchess, a popular member of the House
of Windsor for over three decades, and good wishes began to pour
in. However, surprise turned to…
Caught forever in a moment of time, they
are the tragic family whose terrible end in World War One still
appals and fascinates today. The children of the last Tsar of
Russia died alongside their parents in Yekaterinburg one hundred
years ago this summer. And yet Olga…
Royal weddings bring all kinds of
expectations and among them is one filled with sparkle and glitter.
For we all assume a royal bride will arrive for her marriage
wearing a tiara and when the wedding will result in them becoming a
consort or consort in waiting, the…
The Duchess of Sussex pulled a style
surprise on her wedding day when she chose an all but forgotten
royal tiara as the finishing touch to her bridal outfit. Meghan’s
pick has put Queen Mary’s Bandeau Tiara back in the regal spotlight
and reignited interest in the set of stones that make up this
sparkler. And at their heart is a pretty brooch that already had a
royal wedding history all of its…
The Eleanor’s Cross at Hardingstone in
Northampton is a monument to medieval love. It’s one of a dozen
crosses built on the orders of King Edward I in memory of his first
wife, Eleanor of Castile. Constructed between 1291 and 1294 at the
places her coffin had…
They are monuments to love that have told
a royal romance for seven centuries. The Eleanor Crosses are a
famous part of England’s regal history and, for hundreds of years,
they have told the story of the king who built them for the queen
he had lost and could never forget.
A royal wedding just wouldn’t be a royal
wedding without a tiara or three. But when the then Princess
Elizabeth married the Duke of Edinburgh on November 20th 1947, she
almost missed out on wearing the diadem on which she’d set her
heart. For just before the bride was set to leave for Westminster
Abbey, her tiara snapped in two. The diamond disaster happened as
the future Queen was…
On a summer’s day in 1818, a young German
princess walked into one of the most famous hotels in London to
meet a man twice her age. Just a year earlier, Adelaide of
Saxe-Meiningen and her suitor, William, Duke of Clarence, would
never have considered chatting let alone…
On July 6th 1893, London woke to a
blazing hot morning after two days of rain. The streets were decked
with flowers and large crowds were already settled on the pavements
and lampposts as dawn broke. They had come for the royal wedding of
George, Duke of York, second in line…
It’s the hat that almost stole the show
at the Royal Wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and now
the man who designed it has revealed that it made as big an
impression on him as it did on the rest of us. Milliner Philip
Treacy has admitted that the reaction to the hat he created for
Princess Beatrice to wear at William and Kate’s wedding was so
vociferous, he wondered whether it…
