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 Schleswig-Holstein and her cousins.
Cumberland Lodge made a circle for Princess Alix around this part
of her English family. She was…
A royal wedding just wouldn’t be a royal
wedding without a tiara or three. But when the then Princess
Elizabeth married the Duke of Edinburgh on November 20th 1947, she
almost missed out on wearing the diadem on which she’d set her
heart. For just before the…
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…
The most important monument built to the
memory of Prince Albert in London was the magnificent Gothic Albert
Memorial in Kensington Gardens, designed by George Gilbert Scott,
unveiled in 1872. Officially termed the Prince Consort National
Memorial, its location is particularly appropriate, in what has
been popularly termed ‘Albertopolis’.It lies within the cluster of
the museums in…
This year it is 200 years since Carl XIV
Johan became king of both Norway and Sweden. But who was he? King
Carl Johan (1763-1818-1844), originally Jean Baptiste Bernadotte,
was born in the south of France and became a soldier at
17-years-old. During the French Revolution, he…
‘You are entering a consecrated building,
the burial place of a Queen and her Consort. Please be as quiet as
possible’. These respectful words are what greeted any visitor
before they entered the Royal Mausoleum of Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert, at Frogmore in Windsor…
The royal order of the Norwegian Lion was
a Norwegian and Swedish royal order that was instituted by King
Oscar II on 21 January 1904. It had the King as the Grandmaster,
and the order consisted of only one degree, similar to the Order of
the Garter. The intention was that the Norwegian Lion should be a
“sovereign knight order” equivalent to the Swedish Seraphim Order
and the Danish…
On a summer’s day in 1818, a young German
princess walked into one of the most famous hotels in London to
meet a man twice her age. Just a year earlier, Adelaide of
Saxe-Meiningen and her suitor, William, Duke of Clarence, would
never have considered chatting let alone…
On July 6th 1893, London woke to a
blazing hot morning after two days of rain. The streets were decked
with flowers and large crowds were already settled on the pavements
and lampposts as dawn broke. They had come for the royal wedding of
George, Duke of York, second in line…
It was a quiet country affair, far
removed from the pomp and ceremony we’ve come to expect from royal
weddings. The setting was an English parish church, the regal guest
list only filled a couple of pews, and the bride walked in several
minutes late carrying her own train to protect it from the rain.
The marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, on 8 July 1972,
was a royal wedding with a…
