On Wednesday, King Harald of Norway turns
81-years-old. There will be no big celebration like last year, but
a private celebration with friends and the closest family. On the
occasion of the King of Norway’s birthday, we will look at the not
so well known history of His Majesty. King Harald was only a prince
and three-years-old when the Germans invaded Norway during World
War II. King…
Sarah Clarke is officially invested as the first female Black Rod by The Queen at Buckingham Palace
13th February 2018
The Queen held a private audience with
Sarah Clarke at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday where she was
officially invested as the first female Usher of the Black Rod. At
the meeting, Her Majesty presented Ms Clarke with her ebony Black
Rod and the chain of office. She is the…
When most of us are three-years-old, we
are in our front yard playing with our toys and neighbourhood kids
and running around without a care in the world besides who’s going
to win hide and seek. On 26 August 1995, Crown Prince Oyo Nyimba
succeeded his father as the…
On 1 August 1832, the thirteen-year-old
Princess Victoria of Kent made her first entry into her diary; it
was a diary, as she described it on its title page, which had been
given to her by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, at Kensington
Palace the day before. Bound in red, the diary bears the stamp of
her name in gilt letters: “H.R.H The Princess Victoria”; it had
been given to her so…
On 16 March 1861, the Duchess of Kent,
born Princess Marie Louise Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and by
her first marriage, Princess of Leinigen, died at her residence of
Frogmore House, in Windsor Great Park. Though she had been mother
to Queen Victoria, the Duchess of…
The Queen is privately commemorating the
death of her father, King George VI, whose untimely death
occurred 66-years-ago to the day. There are no grand
festivities or celebrations to mark the start of Her Majesty’s 66th
year on the throne. Neither The Queen or the…
The spectacular pyramids which cover the
tombs of the pharaohs are well-known, but the long-running
excavation of the Western Cemetery at Giza has recently discovered
the tomb of a female official from around 4500 years ago. Egypt’s
Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery at the weekend, the
high-ranking palace official has been called “Hetpet” and is
thought to date from the Fifth…
Today, Queen Elisabeth Christine of
Prussia (1715-1797) enjoys a kind of historical exile, banished to
footnotes and paragraphs amidst the mountainous body of
biographical material which exists about her exalted husband,
Frederick II, King of Prussia, already christened…
Animals given to royalty could, of
course, become pets – but they could often be presented in the form
of political gifts, adding therefore to the monarch’s personal
sense of majestas. An example of this is the bay horse and three
brood mares, sent to Henry VIII by…
Born on 23 August 1740 to the Duke
Anthony Ulrich of Brunswick-Luneburg and his wife Anna Leopoldovna,
Ivan was the only grandson of the former Tsar of Russia Ivan V, and
consequently in line to the Russian throne. His mother was the
niece of Empress Anna and expected that one of her line would
inherit the throne once her aunt died. Consequently, Anna and her
husband had spent the majority of…
