FeaturesHistory

The Head of a Royal Angel: The Albert Memorial

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16th July 2018
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…
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Who was King Carl XIV Johan?

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15th July 2018
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…
FeaturesHistory

Taking a look at the Order of the Norwegian Lion

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12th July 2018
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…
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FeaturesHistory

Royal Wedding Dresses: Queen Mary

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10th July 2018
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…
British RoyalsFeaturesHistoryThe Gloucesters

Royal Wedding Rewind: the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester

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8th July 2018
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…
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HistoryQueen Elizabeth II

Princess Elizabeth and the Summer of 1938

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5th July 2018
In 1938, 80 summers ago, twelve-year-old Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II) and her younger sister, Margaret, looked forward excitedly to their annual holiday in Scotland during August and September. Only the recent death of their beloved maternal grandmother, the Countess of Strathmore, would mar their visit to Glamis Castle, still occupied for part of the year by their grandfather, the…
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