In the last days of August 1968, the Royal Family made a sad and surprising announcement. Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent’s health was ”giving rise to anxiety” following the diagnosis of an inoperable brain tumour. There was sympathy for the duchess, a popular member of the House of Windsor for over three decades, and good wishes began to pour in. However, surprise turned to…
Queen Victoria kept her journals from the year 1832 up until around two weeks before her death in 1901. Her voluminous correspondence is well known; indeed, it was averaged by the author Giles St Aubyn that the Queen wrote up to some 2,500 words per day (Christopher Hibbert…
‘Islay [a pet dog] is still plagued by him [Lord Melbourne] every evening—a thing which he much enjoys—and constantly begs for the spectacles. I forgot to tell you that Karl has given me a pretty little Rowley, who likewise lives in the house. The multitude of dogs is…
Caught forever in a moment of time, they are the tragic family whose terrible end in World War One still appals and fascinates today. The children of the last Tsar of Russia died alongside their parents in Yekaterinburg one hundred years ago this summer. And yet Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei had lived most of their lives in imperial splendour.
They had been born to Nicholas II, Tsar…
Royal weddings bring all kinds of expectations and among them is one filled with sparkle and glitter. For we all assume a royal bride will arrive for her marriage wearing a tiara and when the wedding will result in them becoming a consort or consort in waiting, the…
“For centuries the Tsars of Russia have been waging wars simply for the lust of territory and for the glory of Autocracy. The rulers of Russia have sown the wind and they are now beginning to reap the whirlwind.”
-Carl Joubert
The story of Russia’s last Tsar and…
The personal jewellery of the last Tsarina, Alexandra Feodorovna
14th August 2018
The personal jewellery of the last Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918) provides a living, tangible timeline of her private life, quite apart from the glittering jewels which she would have worn as a Romanov bride. Inevitably though, the public life and the private sphere overlapped into jewellery, where Alexandra would receive magnificent personal gifts from the Tsar, such as the…
‘Never, never can I forget this brilliant year… so full of marvellous kindness, loyalty & devotion of so many millions which I really could hardly have expected’. (Quoted in Christopher Hibbert, Queen Victoria, A Personal History, 379).
With these words, Queen…
The visit of the future Tsar Nicholas II to Queen Victoria in the summer of 1894 has a fabled quality; it took place a mere two months after his engagement to Princess Alix of Hesse in Coburg.
This visit has a special poignancy when viewed through later eyes; we know of…
Queen Victoria began her journal in 1832 at the age of thirteen and continued to keep it until old age, with the last entry made just nine days before she died, constituting, therefore, a remarkable royal record. She took her journal with her wherever she went on her travels, which was entrusted to the care of her Wardrobe Maids.
The one hundred and forty-one bound volumes of Queen Victoria’s…
