Queen Victoria
Was Queen Victoria’s doctor the first psychoanalyst?
Queen Victoria began to experience dark visions after giving birth to her second child. Concerned that she might have inherited…
This museum is a lesson for all curators
The National Railway Museum is 50 years old, and it’s come over all literary. A quote from Howards End stands…
No stone unturned: the art of communing with rocks
If a river can be considered a living thing, why not stones and rocks? They bear witness to thousands of years of history and have spoken to us long before the formation of language itself. We just need to learn to listen
The crimes of Cecil Rhodes were every bit as sinister as those of the Nazis
Through bribery and ruthless exploitation, the unapologetic racist worked to unite Africa under British rule – with consequences that still haunt us today
A.C. Benson enters the pantheon of great English diarists
The intimate of writers, politicians and royalty, Benson confined his waspish anecdotes to journals kept over a period of 40 years, now available in a magnificent two-volume edition
‘Death is a very poor painter’: the 19th-century craze for plaster casts
Bourgeois homes in the early 19th century became ‘virtual museums of death’, with models of heroes jostling replicas of the hands and feet of lost loved ones
‘Carried away by those Russians’ – the dreadful fate of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters
The queen’s repeated warnings to Alix and Ella of the danger of marrying Russians were ignored, and both Princesses of Hesse would die appalling deaths at the hands of revolutionaries
How cartomania captivated even Queen Victoria
The craze for photographic cartes de visite that swept Victorian Britain was further boosted by the Queen’s own enthusiasm for the format
Distrust and resentment have plagued Anglo-Russian relations for centuries
On a visit to England in 1556, Ivan the Terrible’s envoy alienated Londoners with his extreme suspicions – and lurid insults have been exchanged ever since
The naming of cats
It took a long time for cats to gain the same serious status as dogs, but by the 18th century they were starting to have personalities, says Kathryn Hughes
After Queen Victoria, the flood
Alwyn Turner draws on popular culture to show how violent protest and unrest followed the old queen’s death, making nonsense of the fabled Edwardian ‘golden summer’
America’s touching tributes to the Queen (1901)
The United States hasn’t always reacted rather snidely to the death of the British monarch. Below is The Spectator’s lead…
Resculpting the past
Rather than tearing statues down, Hew Locke believes in reworking them to highlight their place in our imperial history. Stuart Jeffries speaks to him
Blood is thicker than water
In Traitor King, Andrew Lownie shows how the Duke of Windsor — the former Edward VIII, who abdicated in 1936…
Bigamists, lunatics and adventurers
The world of 19th-century British music was raucous, but are there any masterpieces waiting to be rediscovered? wonders Richard Bratby
On the bias
The Gift is three plays in one. It opens in a blindingly white Victorian parlour where a posh lady, Sarah,…
Nothing can beat the romance of luxury train travel between the wars
There may never have been a murder on the real Orient Express, but otherwise Agatha Christie’s depiction of luxury train…
What Mary Wollstonecraft writes about motherhood is still so relevant
Walking into Fingal’s Cave, after scrambling across the rocks to reach it from the landing stage where the boat from…
Almost triumphs over the absurdity of its premise: Northern Ballet’s Victoria reviewed
Blame Kenneth MacMillan. The great Royal Ballet choreographer of the 1960s, 70s and 80s was convinced that narrative dance could…
Stitches in time
When Martha Ann Ricks was 76 she travelled from her home in Liberia to London to meet Queen Victoria. The…
Away with the fairies
As an erstwhile obituarist, I pity the poor hack who had to write up the life of Laurence Oliphant —…
A new track record
Simon Bradley dates the demise of the on-board meal service to 1962, when Pullman services no longer offered croutons with…
When we were very young
A wonderfully vivid school story has surfaced written by Queen Victoria as a child. The monarch was clearly a sensational novelist manqué, says Philip Hensher
The bravest of the brave
‘It is the task of a Patton or a Napoleon to persuade soldiers that bits of ribbon are intrinsically valuable.…
Anniversary
‘You must promise to be with us for our silver wedding D.V. which will be in four years,’ wrote Queen…
