On July 6th 1893, London woke to a blazing hot morning after two days of rain. The streets were decked with flowers and large crowds were already settled on the pavements and lampposts as dawn broke. They had come for the royal wedding of George, Duke of York, second in line to the throne but what many really wanted to see was the bride. And Princess Mary of Teck was ready to step into the…
Sophie Helen Rhys-Jones was born on 20 January 1965 as the youngest child and only daughter of Christopher Bournes Rhys-Jones and the late Mary O’Sullivan at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. She has an elder brother, David. One of her godparents was the late…
She’s the future queen consort, a mother of three – including a future king – and one of the most famous women in the world. But back in 1982, the future Duchess of Cambridge was just another baby in the nursery at Royal Berkshire Hospital.
Catherine…
It was a quiet country affair, far removed from the pomp and ceremony we’ve come to expect from royal weddings. The setting was an English parish church, the regal guest list only filled a couple of pews, and the bride walked in several minutes late carrying her own train to protect it from the rain. The marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, on 8 July 1972, was a royal wedding with a…
It’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s coming…the tapestry is coming home. The Bayeux Tapestry is heading back to British shores, for the first time in almost 1000 years, and you need to put 2022 in your diary right now if you want to see this…
‘The Royal Family in 1846’ by the fashionable German painter, Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-73) is an extraordinarily important image.
Queen Victoria regarded it as the painter’s supreme achievement, although he painted the Queen on other occasions, most notably in…
Royal menageries became homes for the many animals that were given in previous centuries as political presents from their respective countries and thereby entered a life of exalted captivity, the nature of any zoo now being a controversial one.
The oldest baroque zoo was founded at the Austrian imperial summer residence of Schönbrunn, in 1760, just as there was a Royal Menagerie in the fabled…
Queen Victoria, who ruled from 1837 to 1901, laid out some very specific instructions for her funeral.
Her personal physician was with her in her final hours when she died on the Isle of Wight. She was surrounded by her family, including her son and successor King Edward…
Continuing our series, we are taking a look at the life of Sofia Hellqvist before becoming Princess Sofia of Sweden.
The pristine lakes, forests, and mountains of Älvdalen, Sweden look straight out of a Disney fairytale. It’s no wonder that a future princess spent her…
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…
