On 20 June 1837, Princess Victoria of
Kent was awoken in her bedroom at Kensington Palace, writing later
in her journal entry for that day, in which significantly the proud
new word ‘alone’ features intermittently (also underlined), we
read: “I was awoke at 6 o’clock by Mamma, who told me the
Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here and wished to
see me. I got out of bed and…
Catherine of Braganza has gone down in
history as a rather nice lady who liked drinking tea. The
Portuguese princess who arrived in Portsmouth in 1662 to marry
Charles II has been portrayed as a gentle soul whose heart was
broken by her inability to have children and who…
The artworks by the fashionable German
portrait painter and historical artist Friedrich August von
Kaulbach (1860-1920) of Princess Alix of Hesse, later Tsarina
Alexandra Feodorovna and her elder sister, Elisabeth Feodorovna,
‘Ella’ Grand Duchess Sergei of Russia, provide, I think, a rare
insight into these two princesses who would both marry into the
Russian Imperial House of Romanov. Not…
It was 4 August 1982. The IRA had
recently set off bombs in Regent’s Park and Hyde Park, and just a
few weeks before that, the infamous Michael Fagan
incident occurred, when a man managed to break into Buckingham
Palace and entered The Queen’s bedroom. But a happier…
