On 25 October 1897, Queen Victoria
drafted her last will, the manuscript of which is preserved at
Windsor. Typically for the Queen, such a document existed outside
of her journal and in her entry for that day – written up at
Balmoral – there is no mention of her making it, although
admittedly, this is the journal entry which survives in the copies
made by her beloved daughter, Princess…
In honour of The Queen’s Holyrood Week,
we’re taking a look at royal history in and around Edinburgh. Our
senior reporter Kristin Contino headed to Scotland to find out more
about some favourite royal spots. The first thing that strikes you
about the Palace of…
The wedding ring of Queen Victoria has
its special poignancy, a symbol of the passionate marriage she
enjoyed with Prince Albert. Placed on her finger on the morning of
10 February 1840, her private instructions ensured that she would
wear it in perpetuity. What do we know…
When the newly-married Queen Victoria
returned with Prince Albert to Buckingham Palace, she was with the
Prince ‘from 10m. to 2 till 20 m.p.2’, after which the couple went
down for the wedding breakfast. During these thirty minutes, Queen
Victoria gave Prince Albert his own wedding ring (Elizabeth
Longford, Queen Victoria, 152). At this wedding breakfast was the
royal cake. This cake, unlike…
Queen Victoria’s wedding veil was an
object of singular poignancy because of the enormous sentimental
value that it represented to her in personal terms and the context
in which she last wore it. She wore in on the monumental day – 10
February 1840 – the day she…
In the summer of 1894, Tsarevich Nicholas
of Russia came to stay at Walton-on-Thames, in the house which his
fiancée, Princess Alix of Hesse’s eldest sister, Victoria, Princess
Louis of Battenberg and her husband, Prince Louis of Battenberg had
rented. They would stay in…
The first and only time that the boy
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited London occurred between 1764-5, at
about the half-way point of the Mozart family’s monumental European
Grand Tour, which was to prove pivotal in Wolfgang’s developmental
process as a composer, the beginning proper of those childhood
travels he would make on his path towards musical maturity. Over
the fifteen months that…
His birth secured the succession in a way
the British royal family had never known before. When Mary, Duchess
of York delivered a healthy boy on June 23rd 1894 she ensured that
her royal dynasty had three heirs in direct line to the throne. But
the baby who arrived that day…
It is the high point of summer and a high
point in the royal history books. For June 22nd, in the very heart
of midsummer, has seen some of the most celebrated and sparkling of
all regal events. And all of them are milestones in famous
reigns. Here are four special royal…
A picture is worth a thousand words and
sometimes captures the essence of a moment more than the most
perfect prose. The royal story is filled with images that tell a
tale all of their own. In this occasional series, Royal
Central looks at some of the best known pictures in regal history
and today we rewind almost four decades to a very famous debut in
London. The picture – June 22nd 1982…
