On Wednesday, King Harald of Norway turns
81-years-old. There will be no big celebration like last year, but
a private celebration with friends and the closest family. On the
occasion of the King of Norway’s birthday, we will look at the not
so well known history of His Majesty. King Harald was only a prince
and three-years-old when the Germans invaded Norway during World
War II. King…
On 1 August 1832, the thirteen-year-old
Princess Victoria of Kent made her first entry into her diary; it
was a diary, as she described it on its title page, which had been
given to her by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, at Kensington
Palace the day before. Bound in…
On 16 March 1861, the Duchess of Kent,
born Princess Marie Louise Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and by
her first marriage, Princess of Leinigen, died at her residence of
Frogmore House, in Windsor Great Park. Though she had been mother
to Queen Victoria, the Duchess of…
Today, Queen Elizabeth will be entering
her 67th year as monarch. A feat never achieved before by a British
monarch. She will not be celebrating the occasion because the date
also marks the anniversary of her father’s death. The next
nationwide celebrations for a jubilee occasion will be in 2022 when
Her Majesty celebrates 70 years on the throne. The Platinum Jubilee
will take place in the…
The spectacular pyramids which cover the
tombs of the pharaohs are well-known, but the long-running
excavation of the Western Cemetery at Giza has recently discovered
the tomb of a female official from around 4500 years ago. Egypt’s
Ministry of Antiquities announced the…
With invitations set to go out this week
for the biggest event of the year, rumours are circulating over who
has been invited to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding, and
also, those who will be staying away. Until May 19th, we will not
know who will sit in the…
Today, Queen Elisabeth Christine of
Prussia (1715-1797) enjoys a kind of historical exile, banished to
footnotes and paragraphs amidst the mountainous body of
biographical material which exists about her exalted husband,
Frederick II, King of Prussia, already christened ‘the Great’ by
contemporary Europe and whom she prided herself on having been
married to. It is a sad echo of the type of…
Animals given to royalty could, of
course, become pets – but they could often be presented in the form
of political gifts, adding therefore to the monarch’s personal
sense of majestas. An example of this is the bay horse and three
brood mares, sent to Henry VIII by…
Born on 23 August 1740 to the Duke
Anthony Ulrich of Brunswick-Luneburg and his wife Anna Leopoldovna,
Ivan was the only grandson of the former Tsar of Russia Ivan V, and
consequently in line to the Russian throne. His mother was the
niece of Empress Anna and expected that…
Alongside the well-established royal love
of dogs, cats are far less recorded as preferred pets, unlike their
canine counterparts. They have, however, been no less loved by
those that did own them. So revered were cats (“mau”) as sacred
animals in Ancient Egypt that they were often mummified. Feline
depictions of Egyptian deities date back as far as 3100 BC; the
goddess Bastet often took this…
