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…
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…
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 Great Park, when it used to
be open to the public. It was of course, not the only royal
memorial to the dead Prince; England…
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…
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 to the throne but what many
really wanted to see was the bride. And Princess Mary of Teck was
ready to step into the…
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…
It’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s
coming…the tapestry is coming home. The Bayeux Tapestry is heading
back to British shores, for the first time in almost 1000 years,
and you need to put 2022 in your diary right now if you want to see
this…
‘The Royal Family in 1846’ by the
fashionable German painter, Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-73) is
an extraordinarily important image. Queen Victoria regarded it as
the painter’s supreme achievement, although he painted the Queen on
other occasions, most notably in 1843, in the famous ‘intimate’
portrait, which was Prince Albert’s favourite of her, showing her
in a most private image…
