FeaturesHistory

20 June 1837: Waking up Queen Victoria

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27th June 2018
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…
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A Portrait of Princess Alix of Hesse

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14th June 2018
A portrait of the toddler Princess Alix of Hesse by the Austrian painter George Koberwein caught my attention back in 2004. Examining how it came to be painted was a source of great interest to me, not least because the picture that he produced of the baby princess, not…
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Banbury Cross and a Royal Wedding

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11th June 2018
Banbury Cross is of course, synonymous with local Oxfordshire folklore for many, because of the popular rhyme which has a ‘fine lady’ riding to it on her cockhorse. Indeed, this is the main reason why many people know of the existence of the Cross at all. Far less known is the fact that the Cross commemorates a royal marriage, a topical thought in the light of the recent royal wedding at…
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Flora Danica and a Royal Wedding

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3rd June 2018
In addition to the private gifts exchanged at royal weddings were also those public gifts given on behalf of a nation. Either to accompany its native bride on her marriage, or increasingly, to take the form of diplomatic presents, such as the Sevres porcelain dinner service…
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Queen Victoria's honeymoon at Windsor Castle

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21st May 2018
Following her wedding at St James’s Palace to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha on 10 February 1840, Queen Victoria drove to Windsor for her honeymoon. Windsor had mixed associations for the Queen. It was the place of the famous contretemps between her uncle, King William IV and her mother, the Duchess of Kent; it was also where the father she had never known, Edward, Duke of Kent, was…
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Queen Victoria and Cliveden

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18th May 2018
Praised by Alexander Pope in his Moral Essays as possessing a ‘proud alcove’ in which one might happily be ‘galant and gay’, the great house of Cliveden, Taplow, where Meghan Markle spent the night before her wedding to Prince Harry, was visited by Queen Victoria in…
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The Quire at St. George's Chapel, Windsor

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17th May 2018
The Quire of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor is an area extraordinarily rich in the history of the English Monarchy, yet this sacred and mystical space in the Chapel enshrining the Order of the Garter – the Order’s spiritual home – is as much associated with royal weddings as well as royal burial. The marble floor of the Quire carries with it quite literally, the strata of centuries and…
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