FeaturesHistory

The Eleanor Crosses: a king's memorial to his lost love

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2nd August 2018
They are monuments to love that have told a royal romance for seven centuries. The Eleanor Crosses are a famous part of England’s regal history and, for hundreds of years, they have told the story of the king who built them for the queen he had lost and could never forget. Now, in 2018, just a handful survive to pay witness to the devotion of Edward I to his consort, Eleanor of Castile. But…
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Queen Victoria's dogs

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1st August 2018
Queen Victoria’s love of dogs provided the inspiration for royal sculpture and painting, as well, of course, the Queen’s journal entries. References to her dogs abound throughout. Interestingly, her life may in one way, be charted through her dogs, because they were with…
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Princess Alix of Hesse's visit to Malta

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30th July 2018
Princess Alix of Hesse visited Malta in 1890. Little would appear to have been recorded about it, although it is possible to piece together some details of the trip from surviving accounts, biographies by those that personally knew her and from extracts of letters she wrote herself. The following is the result of what I have managed to discover so far about this visit that she made, as part of a…
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Queen Victoria and the Archbishop

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25th July 2018
Biography is also made up of people in the background; so it is with William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury. The appearances he made in the life of the future Queen Victoria were of extreme significance, in a way that was unique, and whilst these functions formed a natural part of his official duties as dictated by the Church of England, he was part of her world almost literally from the first…
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Royal Cousins and Imperial Russia

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24th July 2018
Princess Alix of Hesse – as the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna was known before her marriage to the young Tsar Nicholas II in 1894 – visited Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park on several occasions, as the residence of her maternal aunt, Princess Helena of…
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Queen Victoria: The story of a royal statue

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16th July 2018
Of the memorials in Kensington Gardens, many share a close connection with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the most important to the latter being the ornate Gothic masterpiece designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, known as the Albert Memorial, which was unveiled in 1872 and restored in recent memory. The statue to the great doctor Edward Jenner (1749-1823) was revealed by Prince Albert and has…
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