Features

A royal history mystery: who was brave enough to throw a snowball at Henry VIII?

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18th December 2023
While modern royal Christmas celebrations take place at Sandringham, for hundreds of years it was Windsor Castle that was the preferred setting for the festive celebrations of kings and queens.Victoria and Albert loved to spend the season there but they were only following the pattern of dozens of monarchs.Whilst the German Christmas was much popularised by Prince Albert, the preference…
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Features

A very Windsor Christmas

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14th December 2023
Nearly 25 years after her grandfather George V became the first to deliver a Christmas broadcast, Queen Elizabeth II would carry on the tradition and create history in her own way. Christmas 1957, The Queen’s Christmas broadcast was televised for the first time. During…
Features

The special Scandinavian Christmas celebration in memory of a saint

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13th December 2023
The 13th of December is St. Lucia’s Day, traditionally celebrated in the holiday season. While it is a less popular holiday in the United Kingdom and North America, it is still widely celebrated in Scandinavia and Northern Italy.Like many other Scandinavian families, the Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian royal families all observe St. Lucia’s Day in December.St. Lucia’s Day (also…
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Features

The sweet gift of a prince to a grieving queen on the saddest of Christmas days

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11th December 2023
She had made the season her own. The festive season at the end of the 19th century was very different from that in 1837, the year she had become monarch. Yet the final Christmas of Queen Victoria was filled with heartbreak.The queen herself could not get away from it, noting in her diary for December 25th 1900 ”this has indeed been a terribly sad Christmas for us all!”. And it had…
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