It was a quiet country house, described
by several who knew it as ‘’little’’ and a ‘’pied a terre’, given
as a wedding present to a royal couple who were expected to linger
on the fringes of regal life. Yet on July 2nd 1903, it became the
birthplace of one of the most popular and celebrated monarchs of
the 20th century. For it was at Appleton House, on the Sandringham
Estate, that…
The official announcement that King
Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands will make a
state visit to the UK this autumn is confirmation of a long-awaited
and hotly anticipated trip. The visit will run between October 23rd
and 24th and will see the Dutch royals…
The life of Diana, Princess of Wales was
never far removed from royalty even before she married into the
House of Windsor. A member of the influential Spencer family, she
counted King Edward III, King Henry VII and King Charles II among
her ancestors while she’d been named…
The imperial palace of Schönbrunn in the
western suburb of Hietzing on the outskirts of Vienna, was the
summer residence of the former Habsburg dynasty. It stuns with its
magnificence, but then this, of course, was part of its purpose and
is the power of its architecture. It has the glory of the monarch’s
glare. The palace, like the great country house in an imperial
form, was intended to…
History’s royal Kates have taken part in
some of the best-known stories in Britain’s regal history but while
royal Katherines can be found in England as far back as the 13th
century, it’s a name that has gone in and out of favour as a regal
choice. A…
Born a princess, daughter of a feted king
and a much-admired queen, this royal Kate seemed destined for
a crown of her own. But when civil war once more erupted in
England, she found herself on the wrong side of royal favour and
ended up a countess instead. This is the…
One of the earliest names that occurs in
the life of the future Queen Victoria is that of ‘Siebold’;
although the name vanishes almost on the first mention. But no
single name should be rendered insignificant just because it only
occurs once. This is undoubtedly the case with Madame Siebold or
more precisely, Charlotte Heidenreich von Siebold (1788-1859).
Madame Siebold was an accoucheuse who…
The Swiss Cottage at Osborne is a capsule
of successive royal childhood, which continued to hold a place in
the affections of the first children that used it – the nine
children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert – long after they had
grown up, just as it would for…
On 20 June 1837, Princess Victoria of
Kent was awoken in her bedroom at Kensington Palace, writing later
in her journal entry for that day, in which significantly the proud
new word ‘alone’ features intermittently (also underlined), we
read: “I was awoke at 6…
Catherine of Braganza has gone down in
history as a rather nice lady who liked drinking tea. The
Portuguese princess who arrived in Portsmouth in 1662 to marry
Charles II has been portrayed as a gentle soul whose heart was
broken by her inability to have children and who instead contented
herself by making a nice cuppa the fashion of the day while trying
to be friends with her husband’s many…
