FeaturesHistoryInsight

Knitting with Queen Victoria

A charming photograph taken by Mary Steen in the Queen’s Sitting Room at Windsor on 21 May 1895 shows an elderly Queen Victoria knitting or crocheting, sat with her youngest daughter, Beatrice, Princess Henry of Battenberg, who dutifully reads the newspaper aloud to her mother whilst the Queen listens, needles in her hand and a ball of wool at her feet. It is a wonderfully domestic snapshot…
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FeaturesHistoryInsightRoyal Weddings

Queen Victoria's wedding shoes?

Northampton Museums own a pair of flat shoes, believed to be those worn by Queen Victoria on her wedding day, 10 February 1840. Of white satin, they certainly would have complimented the Queen’s own simple wedding dress of finely woven Spitalfields silk satin in her own words: ‘I wore a white satin gown with a very deep flounce of Honiton, imitation of old…’ Northampton Museum & Art…
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British RoyalsInsightRoyal WeddingsThe Edinburghs

The Countess of Wessex's nod to her wedding day on her 20th anniversary

As she celebrated her twentieth wedding anniversary with a day out at Royal Ascot with her husband, it appeared that the Countess of Wessex was paying her own tribute to her famous day as a royal bride. For Sophie was in white and black on her big anniversary, just as she was two decades ago when she said ‘I do’ at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Embed from Getty Images As she…
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HistoryInsight

Gifts from an imperial godmother: The Allen twins of Harrogate

In May 1894, Princess Alix of Hesse undertook a cure in the fashionable Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate for sciatica. She had become engaged to Tsarevich Nicholas of Russia at Coburg the previous month. Whilst she stayed at Harrogate, she regularly corresponded with her fiancé, who would later join her at the house her eldest sister, Victoria, Princess Louis of Battenberg had rented at…
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