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…
One of the earliest names that occurs in
the life of the future Queen Victoria is that of ‘Siebold’;
although the name vanishes almost on the first mention. But no
single name should be rendered insignificant just because it only
occurs once. This is undoubtedly the case…
The Duke of York, Princess Anne and the
Earl and Countess of Wessex will be moving out of Buckingham Palace
shortly. The East Wing, which houses the apartments of Prince
Andrew and Prince Edward and his wife, will be undergoing
renovations under the Buckingham Place…
The Swiss Cottage at Osborne is a capsule
of successive royal childhood, which continued to hold a place in
the affections of the first children that used it – the nine
children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert – long after they had
grown up, just as it would for their own children, most of whom
played there in the next generation. The Princess Royal, for
example, returned to the Swiss…
On 20 June 1837, Princess Victoria of
Kent was awoken in her bedroom at Kensington Palace, writing later
in her journal entry for that day, in which significantly the proud
new word ‘alone’ features intermittently (also underlined), we
read: “I was awoke at 6 o’clock…
Catherine of Braganza has gone down in
history as a rather nice lady who liked drinking tea. The
Portuguese princess who arrived in Portsmouth in 1662 to marry
Charles II has been portrayed as a gentle soul whose heart was
broken by her inability to have children and who…
The artworks by the fashionable German
portrait painter and historical artist Friedrich August von
Kaulbach (1860-1920) of Princess Alix of Hesse, later Tsarina
Alexandra Feodorovna and her elder sister, Elisabeth Feodorovna,
‘Ella’ Grand Duchess Sergei of Russia, provide, I think, a rare
insight into these two princesses who would both marry into the
Russian Imperial House of Romanov. Not…
It was 4 August 1982. The IRA had
recently set off bombs in Regent’s Park and Hyde Park, and just a
few weeks before that, the infamous Michael Fagan
incident occurred, when a man managed to break into Buckingham
Palace and entered The Queen’s bedroom. But a happier…
The art dealer and BBC Historian Philip
Mould has discovered what could be the earliest full-length
portrait of Elizabeth I as Queen. The painting is currently on
display at 18-19 Pall Mall after being restored. Art historians and
critics have been amazed by the painting…
For a woman who founded one of the most
famous royal dynasties in British history, she is surpisingly
enigmatic. Katherine of Valois was the first Kate to be Queen of
England and yet much of the modern imagining of her comes from her
fleeting appearance in the works of Shakespeare. But what little we
do know seems to indicate that the ‘fair Kate’ of Henry V was every
bit as ambitious…
