FeaturesHistory

'My darling Auntie': Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna and Princess Louise

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21st February 2019
Amongst the extensive collection of letters left by Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, the sixth daughter of Queen Victoria, are at least two from her niece, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918). Two of Alexandra’s letters to her aunt were reproduced in the admirable book Darling Loosy, Letters to Princess Louise 1856-1939, ed. Elizabeth Longford (1991). I want to explore these letters and…
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The hunt is on for the powerbase of a Tudor legend

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15th February 2019
She wasn’t just the power behind the throne, she was the force that helped create the throne and now one of the grand houses she called home is in the sight of modern historians. Archaeologists have begun a hunt for the Northamptonshire residence of Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII and the woman who helped establish the Tudor dynasty. Lady Margaret, whose determination to put her…
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Norway's lost royal monument

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12th February 2019
Today, an impressive large statue of King Karl Johan is present at the Palace Square in Oslo. It has been there since 1875 and has become a symbol, a landmark and an icon of the entire city. What is less known is that this was not the first statue there. Before the…
FeaturesHistoryRoyal Weddings

Queen Victoria's Wedding Dress

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10th February 2019
Queen Victoria’s wedding dress is a powerful symbol of what she would refer to in her journal as the ‘happiest day of my life’. Most probably, it represents more than any other item of clothing or object, the Queen’s identity as a royal bride. Certainly, she chose to wear it again in 1847, when she was painted in her wedding attire by the fashionable portraitist Franz Xaver Winterhalter…
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Rare portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots to go on display

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8th February 2019
In the portrait she is a young widow, mourning a husband who had died not long after their wedding and whose death left her free to pursue the power she had been born to wield. Almost five hundred years after it was painted, an image of Mary, Queen of Scots at a crucial moment in her tumultuous royal career is going on show. The painting, by Francois Clouet, was only recently confirmed to be of…
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