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 famous piece of history up close and personal. OK, the opening
line might not have the ring or the emotion of the football song
we…
‘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…
In 1938, 80 summers ago, twelve-year-old
Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II) and her younger sister,
Margaret, looked forward excitedly to their annual holiday in
Scotland during August and September. Only the recent death of
their beloved maternal grandmother, the…
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…
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 official announcement that King
Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands will make a
state visit to the UK this autumn is confirmation of a long-awaited
and hotly anticipated trip. The visit will run between October 23rd
and 24th and will see the Dutch royals…
The life of Diana, Princess of Wales was
never far removed from royalty even before she married into the
House of Windsor. A member of the influential Spencer family, she
counted King Edward III, King Henry VII and King Charles II among
her ancestors while she’d been named in honour of a distant
relative who had once been mooted as a bride for George II’s son
and heir, Frederick, Prince of…
The imperial palace of Schönbrunn in the
western suburb of Hietzing on the outskirts of Vienna, was the
summer residence of the former Habsburg dynasty. It stuns with its
magnificence, but then this, of course, was part of its purpose and
is the power of its architecture.
History’s royal Kates have taken part in
some of the best-known stories in Britain’s regal history but while
royal Katherines can be found in England as far back as the 13th
century, it’s a name that has gone in and out of favour as a regal
choice. A…
Born a princess, daughter of a feted king
and a much-admired queen, this royal Kate seemed destined for
a crown of her own. But when civil war once more erupted in
England, she found herself on the wrong side of royal favour and
ended up a countess instead. This is the story of Katherine of
York, one of the last Plantagenet princesses. Katherine was born on
August 14th, 1479, at Eltham Palace in…
