History

A German Princess's memories of Queen Victoria

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13th May 2019
To Queen Victoria, she was ‘dear Marie Erbach’. That was what the Queen called Princess Marie of Battenberg, later Princess zu Erbach-Schönberg, whose memoirs first appeared in English in 1925, printed by London publishers George Allen & Unwin. Princess Marie Karoline of Battenberg was born in 1852 and married in 1871 Gustav Ernst, Count, later Prince zu Erbach-Schönberg (1840-1908). She…
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HistoryInsight

Finding Queen Victoria's perfume

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12th May 2019
Queen Victoria’s use of perfume is a subject of interest because of what it reveals about both her personal toilette and tastes. An equivalent in scent perhaps, of that distinctive signature we know so well on paper, adding an ‘I’ for ‘Imperatrix’ after she was…
Insight

Balmoral to mark bicentenary of the birth of Queen Victoria

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12th May 2019
The Balmoral Castle, Queen Victoria’s beloved Highland home and still Scottish home to the British Royal Family since 1852 when it was purchased for the Queen by Prince Albert, having been leased in 1848, some six years after the Queen and Prince’s first visit to Scotland, in 1842. The architect chosen for the rebuilding of Balmoral was William Smith, City Architect of Aberdeen and the…
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History

Alice in Eastbourne: A Royal Holiday in 1878

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6th May 2019
In the summer of 1878, Queen Victoria’s second daughter, Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, came to Eastbourne, because she had been ordered rest. The sojourn on the East Sussex coast was the gift of Queen Victoria to her daughter, (David Duff, Hessian Tapestry, 177)…
History

Queen Victoria and the Palace of Holyroodhouse

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1st May 2019
Queen Victoria’s love of Scotland and the Scottish Highlands is of course, legendary – immortalised in a wealth of artworks, souvenir albums, including the Queen’s own watercolours and not least of course, the Queen’s Highland journals. She praised Scotland with both her paintbrush and her pen. Queen Victoria was entirely devoted to the romance of the country, as seen through…
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FeaturesHistory

Princess Alix of Hesse's engagement ring?

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13th April 2019
In a recent life of Queen Victoria, (A. N. Wilson, Victoria: A Life, 2014) I stumbled across an illustration of one of the famous group photographs taken behind the Palais Edinburg in Coburg, showing Queen Victoria surrounded by a whole host of contemporary royalty – mostly members of her own family through blood or marriage, including five of her children and numerous grandchildren &#8211…
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