FeaturesHistory

Queen Victoria and the Archbishop

By
25th July 2018
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…
Read more
FeaturesHistory

Royal Cousins and Imperial Russia

By
24th July 2018
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…
FeaturesHistory

The Head of a Royal Angel: The Albert Memorial

By
16th July 2018
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…
Read more
FeaturesHistory

The lost royal 'zoo' at Windsor

By
5th July 2018
Royal menageries became homes for the many animals that were given in previous centuries as political presents from their respective countries and thereby entered a life of exalted captivity, the nature of any zoo now being a controversial one. The oldest baroque zoo was founded at the Austrian imperial summer residence of Schönbrunn, in 1760, just as there was a Royal Menagerie in the fabled…
Read more
FeaturesHistory

The Swiss Cottage, Osborne and Queen Victoria's Children

By
28th June 2018
The Swiss Cottage at Osborne is a capsule of successive royal childhood, which continued to hold a place in the affections of the first children that used it – the nine children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert – long after they had grown up, just as it would for their own children, most of whom played there in the next generation. The Princess Royal, for example, returned to the Swiss…
Read more