In May 1894, Princess Alix of Hesse
undertook a cure in the fashionable Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate
for sciatica. She had become engaged to Tsarevich Nicholas of
Russia at Coburg the previous month. Whilst she stayed at
Harrogate, she regularly corresponded with her fiancé, who would
later join her at the house her eldest sister, Victoria, Princess
Louis of Battenberg had rented at…
Princess Alix of Hesse, later Tsarina
Alexandra Feodorovna, visited the Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate
in 1894 to take a cure for sciatica, during which time she became
godmother to the Allen twins, born in the house where she was
staying, to her landlady, Mrs Allen. These…
In the German spa town of Bad Nauheim in
Hesse, hangs a present – by tradition – from Imperial Russia. It is
to be found within the solemnly beautiful church, the
Reinhardskirche, in the old town quarter, built between 1732/33.
Like many baroque churches whose…
The regal tradition of scratching
signatures in windowpanes is long established and well known. The
windows – particularly when in rooms of royal residences – formed a
kind of living ‘guestbook’, often accompanied by the date the visit
or signature, was made. These windowpanes are silent witnesses to
vanished royal gatherings on long ago summers or essential
occasions, represented today by…
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)…
An exquisite gold, sapphire and diamond
brooch crafted in St Petersburg was consigned to auction in October
2018. I had first encountered it as a personal gift from Tsarina
Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918) to the friend of her youth, Marion
Louisa ‘Pollie’…
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 –…
Contained within the report made by
Nicholas Sokolov, who was charged with conducting the official
investigation into the fate of the Russian Imperial Family by the
White Russian Government in February 1919, is an extraordinary set
of four images, listed as ‘Nos. 15, 16…
I first encountered this hitherto
neglected and virtually ‘forgotten’ letter, categorised as by Tsar
Nicholas II, within the volume The Complete Wartime Correspondence
of Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra April 1914-March
1917, skilfully edited by Prof Joseph T.
Included amongst the works read as a
young woman by Princess Alix of Hesse, later Tsarina Alexandra
Feodorovna (1872-1918), were – according to letters that she wrote
to her eldest sister, Victoria, Princess Louis of Battenberg –
Guizot’s Reformation de la Litterature, the Life of Cromwell and
Raumer’s nine-volume set, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen(Baroness
Sophie Buxhoeveden…
