‘Never, never can I forget this brilliant
year… so full of marvellous kindness, loyalty & devotion of so many
millions which I really could hardly have expected’. (Quoted in
Christopher Hibbert, Queen Victoria, A Personal History, 379). With
these words, Queen Victoria made the final entry in her great
journal for the year 1887 – that of her Golden Jubilee. She had
written in her…
Queen Victoria began her journal in 1832
at the age of thirteen and continued to keep it until old age, with
the last entry made just nine days before she died, constituting,
therefore, a remarkable royal record. She took her journal with her
wherever she went on her…
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…
A bedroom gives a uniquely personal
insight into any historical personality and a royal personage no
less so. Many key moments in Queen Victoria’s life also took place
in her bedrooms, which help in no small way, to tell the story of
that life. The furnishing of this most private of spaces – usually
the penultimate room in the sequence of rooms which defined through
architecture, the level of…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
