The earliest memories of a historical
personage are extraordinarily important, as not only do they reveal
first consciousness of their world and circumstances but crucially,
what they remembered first. They tell snippets of true events, as
they saw them. Of course, we know that all true biography begins
before birth and that event could hardly be expected to count
amongst any of even the very…
On 16 March 1861, Queen Victoria’s
mother, the Duchess of Kent, died at Frogmore House, the private
residence in Windsor Great Park which she had often used, living
there for approximately two decades. After her death, the summer
house she had planned during her lifetime…
Was Queen Victoria a Victorian? The
question is a complex and fascinating one to answer. In the
immediate response, Victoria would seem to typify what it meant to
be ‘Victorian’ because her long reign straddled the nineteenth
century, and the age was accordingly…
The name of Miss M. Hope Robson belongs
to that both visible and invisible host of British royal nannies
and governesses which appeared at the royal courts of Europe in the
nineteenth century, known to their charges but in some cases,
almost forgotten to biography. Correspondence sent to them in
burgeoning childish scrawl and later in a mature script, chart the
chronology in pen or pencil of the…
Aged 10 ¾ years old, Princess Victoria
composed a story. This delightful children’s tale, written by the
future Queen, survives in its own little red ‘Composition’ notebook
in the Royal Archives. To understand how it was made and the full
significance of it, we need…
Queen Victoria is for many, synonymous
with the notion of afternoon tea, probably because the social
ceremony became properly established during the later years of her
reign. The Queen’s evident love of tea, however, reaches back much
further than this elegant ritual.
It’s been used once before and yet we’ve
all been talking about it for months as if it were a royal regular.
After a gap of almost two centuries, we have a new Duke of Sussex.
The Queen has granted that title to Prince Harry who becomes just
the second man to hold the dukedom while his bride, Meghan Markle,
is the first ever Duchess of Sussex. As we celebrate the Royal
Wedding and this royal…
Tulle and organdie were layered to create
a cream and blush effect It was a closely guarded secret but now we
know. Lady Gabriella Windsor’s wedding dress had caused plenty of
speculation ahead of her big day but in the end the only daughter
of Prince and Princess…
The brides of the House of Kent have
shown a penchant for pastel wedding flowers and the latest to join
their number, Lady Gabriella Windsor, is no different. For her
marriage to Thomas Kingston, at Windsor, Lady Ella added some
colour to her petals, just as her Kent…
And so we finally have it, the most
talked about piece of paper in the land. Since the moment his birth
was announced, the registration of Archie Harrison
Mountbatten-Windsor has got everyone very excited indeed. Much of
that eagerness to see the record has come from the fact that the
location of his birth hadn’t been formally announced. But the place
(the Portland Hospital in London) is…
