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…
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…
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 bride was…
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…
