Features

The lost royal garden - on a roof: Ludwig II's Wintergarten

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25th October 2019
Munich has a lost royal garden. As with so much that surrounds the legendary King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886), the myth has its roots in reality. That King who once said of himself ‘I want to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others’ is now an established part of Bavarian folklore in his own right, something to which his activities consciously contributed during his lifetime. Not…
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A mystery linked to William the Conqueror is finally solved

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24th October 2019
It’s puzzled historians for centuries but now one of the pressing questions hanging over one of the most famous royal artefacts in the world has an answer. And it sheds a new light on the reign of the king it celebrates, William the Conqueror. The conquest that gave him a throne and a place in royal legend was commemorated in the Bayeux Tapestry. It tells the story of his decision to…
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Features

Finding five cards from the Tsarina

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22nd October 2019
Whilst researching on the correspondence of the last Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918) of Russia and Princess Marie Bariatinsky, one of the Tsarina’s first maids-of-honour (freilina) in her early years in Russia and a later friend, I discovered a series of…
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The rise of royal photography

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21st October 2019
Recently there has been a remarkable shift in the photographs shared by the royal courts. Increasingly, the official pictures are no longer taken by professional photographers but by members of the royal families themselves. Photographing has become a typical “royal” hobby. In the previous decades, the royal courts instantly contacted professional photographers when there was a need…
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Features

Queen Victoria's little-known visit to Spain

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21st October 2019
Whilst on one of her late holidays in the south of France, Queen Victoria made her only visit to Spain. It was a visit that aroused the Queen’s socio-historic curiosity in national culture and peoples, something she often gave expression to in watercolour sketches as vivid…
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New Marie Antoinette exhibition in Paris celebrates her life

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17th October 2019
Marie Antoinette died on the guillotine at the hands of French Revolutionaries on 16th October 1793. Upon her death, the de-throned Queen was the most hated woman in France and was used a scapegoat for all that was failing in the country at the time following her husband’s reign. Now 226 years after her execution, a new exhibition Marie-Antoinette: the Metamorphosis of an Image, is opening in…
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