Features

Prince Albert is generally credited with introducing the Christmas tree to Britain, but in fact, it was the work of his wife’s grandmother, Queen Charlotte. Like Prince Albert, Charlotte was born and raised in Germany, where the tradition of bringing a tree inside at Christmas time, decorated with lights and sweets, is believed to date back to the 16th century. As a child, Charlotte’s family…

Each family has its own Christmas tradition and royal families are no exception. For seven decades, Elizabeth II enjoyed the celebrations of a family Christmas which she shaped into a traditional all of her own. As the Windsors prepare to mark their first festive season since her death, we look at how Elizabeth II made Christmas a very special time for family.A Very Big Family LunchA week…

Queen Victoria spent her last Christmas at Osborne in 1900. It was forty years exactly since Prince Albert had celebrated his final Christmas in 1860 at Windsor, the setting for so many happy family festivities in the past. Prince Albert did not live to see Christmas 1861, dying on 14 December in the same room in which with strange historical prescience, George IV and William IV had also died, in…