This year, in 2020, marks 75 years since World War II ended. It’s also 80 years since war came to the monarchies of Norway and Denmark. While the Danish royal family was taken prisoner by the Germans, the Norwegian royal family managed to escape from the Germans and carry on the war for the next five years from exile.
Following the German attack on Norway on April 9, 1940, Crown Princess…
This year, in 2020, marks 75 years since World War II ended. It is also the 80th anniversary of war coming to the Monarchies of Norway and Denmark. While the Danish royal family was taken prisoner by the Nazis, the Norwegian royal family managed to escape and carry on the…
The Great Seal of the Realm is a piece of history to savour. We don’t get to see it all that often and when it does make an appearance, it more than packs a punch.For this seal is part of a tradition that goes back to before the Norman Conquest and which, for…
The use of nicknames or epithets to describe a royal or a local ruler was quite common until recent times. Before pictures were easily accessed, or in places where the first name was repeatedly used for consecutive rulers, a nickname was a useful way to distinguish one person from another. Sometimes these names were chosen by the bearer themselves, sometimes they were gained through a courageous…
Norway’s present collection of royal regalia consists of nine pieces. They include three crowns – the king’s crown, the queen’s crown and the crown prince’s crown. However, this was made in 1818 for the coronation of King Karl XVI Johan. Norway had at…
On this
day, March 27, in 1785, His Majesty King Louis XVII was borne in France. He was
born prince of France and Duke of Normandy and was the son of King Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette. When his older brother, Louis Joseph, died in June 1789, he became
the heir to the…
The fact that Europe’s queens and princesses have good relationships with each other is well known. But it’s more perhaps more unusual to hear about friendships between Europe’s royals and Russian politicians. et this was exactly what happened when Queen Sonja first met the first democratically elected leader of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. The free-spirited former Communist managed to…
On this day 64 years ago: The Queen Mother's devastating bellyflop at the Grand National
24th March 2020
March 24 marks exactly 64 years since The Queen Mother suffered one of the cruelest defeats in the history of sport when her horse bellyflopped at the finishing line of the Grand National.
Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, was a huge horse racing lover, with it being…
As the last Emperor of Russia, Tsar Nicholas II’s twenty-three-year reign came to an abrupt end when he abdicated on 15 March 1917. Those tumultuous years of his reign were defined by the Russo-Japanese War that saw the annihilation of the Russian Baltic Fleet, Bloody…
While the coronavirus continues to spread, we can rewind a little over a hundred years in time. In 1918 and 1919, another virus as ravaged countries across the globe. It caused widespread devastation but, despite its origins, it became known as Spanish flu because of a much maligned king.
The Spanish flu came not from Spain, but from France at the very end of the First World War. The…
