The date for The Queen’s coronation,
Tuesday 2nd June 1953, was chosen on the advice
of meteorologists who said that this date was statistically
the most likely to have the best weather. Needless to say, in true
British style, it rained. For the first time in history, the
ancient ceremony of the coronation was broadcast on television in
front of millions of people who bought a television for…
A Gold Quarter Sovereign to commemorate The Queen's Sapphire Coronation Jubilee is released
1st June 2018
A brand new Gold Quarter Sovereign has
been released to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s Sapphire
Coronation Jubilee which marks 65 years since Her Majesty was
coronated in 1953. Collectables firm The Bradford Exchange has
released the new coin to celebrate this…
The Queen is looking to hire a
new Anniversaries Officer to join her existing team who send
out congratulatory letters to those celebrating a big
occasion. If you are about to celebrate your 100th birthday or your
60th wedding anniversary, you will most likely receive a…
Police have said that they believe a man
who died in a helicopter crash on Wednesday afternoon is Her
Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant of North Yorkshire, Barry Dodd CBE.
Formal identification has yet to take place, however, the police
say that Mr Dodd is thought to be the victim. Mr Dodd was piloting
the aircraft on Wednesday afternoon when it came down and caught
fire in a field near…
The third son of King George V and Queen
Mary, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester was born on 31 March 1900.
He was the first son of a monarch to be educated at school and went
onto study at Eton College. His life was full of tragedy starting
with not being able to continue…
First and foremost, we think of bells as
something we hear and don’t see. The bells of Westminster Abbey now
mingle in between the great soundscape of London noise and the busy
restlessness of Westminster, blending the secular with the divine,
much as they have done for…
In St. Thomas’ Church, Newport on the
Isle of Wight, stands an extraordinary monument, touching in its
simplicity. It was erected over the tomb of Princess Elizabeth,
daughter of Charles I (1635-1650). This beloved royal child was
immortalized as such by Van Dyck in his great portrait of the five
children of Charles I, in which the future Charles II stands at the
centre, his left hand resting…
Following her wedding at St James’s
Palace to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha on 10 February 1840,
Queen Victoria drove to Windsor for her honeymoon. Windsor had
mixed associations for the Queen. It was the place of the famous
contretemps between her uncle, King…
Praised by Alexander Pope in his Moral
Essays as possessing a ‘proud alcove’ in which one might happily be
‘galant and gay’, the great house of Cliveden, Taplow, where Meghan
Markle spent the night before her wedding to Prince Harry, was
visited by Queen Victoria in…
Given the inseparable links between music
and the British Monarchy, it naturally follows that the music
chosen for royal weddings reflected both the importance of the
occasion as well as the personal taste of the monarch. Whether it
was the splendour of Handel’s marriage anthem ‘Sing unto God’ for
the wedding of Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1736 or the Chorale
composed by Prince Albert…
