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 expectation is even higher. However, some of the most high profile royal brides of recent times have decided to ditch the diadem…
“For centuries the Tsars of Russia have been waging wars simply for the lust of territory and for the glory of Autocracy. The rulers of Russia have sown the wind and they are now beginning to reap the whirlwind.”
-Carl Joubert
The story of Russia’s last Tsar and…
The personal jewellery of the last Tsarina, Alexandra Feodorovna
14th August 2018
The personal jewellery of the last Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918) provides a living, tangible timeline of her private life, quite apart from the glittering jewels which she would have worn as a Romanov bride. Inevitably though, the public life and the…
‘Never, never can I forget this brilliant year… so full of marvellous kindness, loyalty & devotion of so many millions which I really could hardly have expected’. (Quoted in Christopher Hibbert, Queen Victoria, A Personal History, 379).
With these words, Queen Victoria made the final entry in her great journal for the year 1887 – that of her Golden Jubilee. She had written in her…
The visit of the future Tsar Nicholas II to Queen Victoria in the summer of 1894 has a fabled quality; it took place a mere two months after his engagement to Princess Alix of Hesse in Coburg.
This visit has a special poignancy when viewed through later eyes; we know of…
Queen Victoria began her journal in 1832 at the age of thirteen and continued to keep it until old age, with the last entry made just nine days before she died, constituting, therefore, a remarkable royal record. She took her journal with her wherever she went on her…
‘What sorrows this last year brought us, what endless anxieties, what worries and losses – God grant the new year may be a calmer and happier one for the whole of dear Russia. Sleep well and peacefully…’ With these words, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918) closed a letter on New Year’s Eve 1900 to Princess Marie Bariatinsky, one of the few close friends of her early years as…
This year marks 25 years since King Baudouin of Belgium unexpectedly died while on holiday in Spain. He was the sixth King of the Belgians and at the same time one of the most popular kings Belgium ever had. King Baudouin reigned from 1951 until his death in 1993. However…
Queen Victoria famously wrote of her wedding day – 10 February 1840: ‘“Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!”
The day – 10 February – became one which the Queen – so peculiarly concerned with dates and anniversaries – would ever refer to as having…
A bedroom gives a uniquely personal insight into any historical personality and a royal personage no less so. Many key moments in Queen Victoria’s life also took place in her bedrooms, which help in no small way, to tell the story of that life.
The furnishing of this most private of spaces – usually the penultimate room in the sequence of rooms which defined through architecture, the level of…
