On 6th July 1868, when told of the birth of her seventh granddaughter, Queen Victoria remarked that the news was ‘a very uninteresting thing for it seems to me to go on like the rabbits in Windsor Par
“What a joyous childhood we had!” wrote Princess Alice, the second daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. These were no mere words and it was a sentiment shared by many of her siblings. Far fro
Born into eight very different families, the upbringing and fortunes of Queen Victoria's grandsons varied widely. Some died in childhood, some were killed in action, and others lived to see grandchild
Spring 1917 – the war has been raging for over two and a half years and neither the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey) nor the Entente (Britain, France, Russia and Italy) are any clo
In the summer of 1914 the capitals of Europe erupt in a patriotic frenzy as peoples on all sides, roused by the press, rejoice at the outbreak of the 'war to end wars'. The rejoicing soon turns to dis
Almost a century after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Kaiser Wilhelm II is still viewed as either a warmonger or a madman, as the hundred-year-old propaganda posters remain fixed in the gene
On 28th June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife, Sophie Chotek, were shot dead in broad daylight on a crowded street in Sarajevo. The murder of a relatively unknown archduke in a r
Of all Queen Victoria’s nine children, none was more intriguing than her second daughter, Alice. The contradictions in her personality are so striking that, while she has often been overshadowed by he
