Two quick items to cover on the Windsor front. The first is that the Queen’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, was admitted to hospital today for a hip surgery expected to occur tomorrow. Prince Philip was absent from yesterday’s Easter service at Windsor and has reportedly pulled out of multiple (increasingly rare) public appearance with the Queen in recent weeks.
Perhaps The Crown’s second season’s most memorable episode was that which showed the drama surrounding Prince Charles beginning boarding school in Scotland in 1962. The show doesn’t offer a merry depiction of Gordonstoun, instead offering Charles’s attendance there as a paternal failure stemming from Prince Philip’s own psychological wounds. The question as to whether the episode is “true” has prompted many a headline in the weeks since it aired, but strictly in regards to the issue of Prince Charles at the school, I think that’s more difficult to answer than a simple “yes” or “no.” There were inaccuracies in the episode. There was also some over-dramatization. But it did strike on something real.
This was certainly a pivotal year for the House of Windsor, from retirements to anniversaries to new babies to engagements. It’s also yet another year in a pretty interesting time period because we’re certainly towards the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign and there is more and more focus on the transition of the future and shifting responsibilities. In light of this, here on this site I pretty much focus only on the members of the Royal Family who will continue to play important roles. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the big moments from the past year.
It’s that time of year again: annual engagement numbers are out and so now we look a what the statistics tell us about how the British Royal Family did. These numbers were released yesterday thanks to a list published by The Times every year courtesy of a veteran royal watcher, Tom O’Donovan, who has been compiling the statistics since 1979.
Continue reading “2017’s Engagement Numbers & What They Tell Us”
Happy Boxing Day, everyone! I didn’t have time to write up two posts yesterday, so in a choice between the church walkabout and the Queen’s televised Christmas message I chose the former but we’re circling back today. The speech reflected on the passage of time on multiple fronts, beginning with the Queen’s first televised Christmas message which saw its 60th anniversary this year. The tradition of a holiday address dates back to the reign of the Queen’s grandfather, George V, however up until 1957 the medium by which the monarch reached the public was radio.
Nothing about today was unexpected, but even so, it was still incredibly exciting to not only see Meghan Markle join the Royal Family at Sandringham, but to see the first photos of her and the Duchess of Cambridge together. And if that wasn’t enough, the lineup of her, Prince Harry, Kate and the Duke of Cambridge finally gave us a visual of what has already been deemed the “fab four” by the press – the new normal for the royal trio, if you will.
Continue reading “The Debut of the “Fab Four”: Royal Christmas 2017″
As we all know by now, Meghan Markle is due to join her first holiday with the Royal Family tomorrow. We don’t know for sure whether she’ll be staying at Sandringham House with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh or at Anmer Hall with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, but the best guesses are for the latter. Regardless, we’ll see her on Christmas Day alongside the rest of the Royal Family.
So, what exactly is she in for? Luckily, thanks to holidays traditions not having changed too much in the last several decades, we have a pretty good sense.
The visit of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, to London in 1961 has been picking up some headlines recently thanks to it being featured in the trailers for The Crown’s second season. Most of the stories are framed around the question of how the Queen and Jackie got on, particularly in light of Kennedy’s famous womanizing and rumors swirling around ’60s about Philip, so today I thought it would be worth taking a look at what really went down – at least, according to the Queen’s biographers.
I was hoping we would get some arrival/departure shots of members of the Royal Family this evening and lo and behold we have. It was reported that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were hosting a black tie dinner party this evening for 150 guests. It was deemed a private occasion this year and there was no service held at Westminster Abbey as we’ve seen in the past.
Today marks 70 years of marriage for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Together they have evolved from a young couple supporting Elizabeth’s father, George VI, in post-war Britain to the heads of the British Royal Family as it rolls into the 21st century. From four children, born between 1948 and 1964, they’ve amassed eight grandchildren, five (soon to be six) great-grandchildren and lived through three of their children’s divorces (and two of their remarriages.) It’s hard sometimes to reconcile the images of the two of them as 20-somethings in the 1940s with the grandparent figures they’ve become – just as it’s hard to reconcile the RF of the mid-20th century with how it looks and behaves today – but they are the common denominators.
