FeaturesHistory

Loving Albert

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6th September 2018
In Prince & Patron, the Summer Opening Exhibition at Buckingham Palace, a bust of Prince Albert is displayed, labelled simply as ‘William Theed (1804-91) Prince Albert, 1862; marble.’ But it is no ordinary bust, nor is it just one among other memorial busts commissioned by the Queen. The bust had a unique place in the posthumous sculpture made of Prince Albert and was of quite singular…
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Queen Victoria's memoir

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23rd August 2018
Queen Victoria kept her journals from the year 1832 up until around two weeks before her death in 1901. Her voluminous correspondence is well known; indeed, it was averaged by the author Giles St Aubyn that the Queen wrote up to some 2,500 words per day (Christopher Hibbert…
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Queen Victoria's King Charles spaniel: Dash

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21st August 2018
‘Islay [a pet dog] is still plagued by him [Lord Melbourne] every evening—a thing which he much enjoys—and constantly begs for the spectacles. I forgot to tell you that Karl has given me a pretty little Rowley, who likewise lives in the house. The multitude of dogs is really terrible!’ (ed. A. C. Benson & Viscount Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 1, 1837-1843, 204). So the…
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Looking at the wedding of Queen Victoria in objects

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6th August 2018
Queen Victoria famously wrote of her wedding day – 10 February 1840: ‘“Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!” The day – 10 February – became one which the Queen – so peculiarly concerned with dates and anniversaries – would ever refer to as having been her wedding day, in her great journal; it formed the exact happy opposite to that grief-stricken 14 December, (the…
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Queen Victoria's dogs

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1st August 2018
Queen Victoria’s love of dogs provided the inspiration for royal sculpture and painting, as well, of course, the Queen’s journal entries. References to her dogs abound throughout. Interestingly, her life may in one way, be charted through her dogs, because they were with…
FeaturesHistory

Postcards from Russia: Earl Mountbatten of Burma and his Romanov cousins

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31st July 2018
On 25 June 1900, Victoria, Princess Louis of Battenberg – born Princess Victoria of Hesse – gave birth to a son at Frogmore House in Windsor Great Park, the erstwhile residence of Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, until her death in 1861. Princess Louis of Battenberg had been the firstborn child of Queen Victoria’s second daughter, Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of…
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