The Queen’s cousin, Princess Alexandra of Kent, made this passing comment in a 1952 letter to her brother Edward, the Duke of Kent. The letter details a day of events in the life of the Princess.
Discussing how she developed a painful blister: “So this morning Dr Middleton came and pierced it! Ho Ho. Charles was fascinated and insisted on watching. Gruesome child don’t you think?”, she wrote.
The letter, written on Balmoral Castle paper and dated September 21, also talks about a shooting party, a story written about her in the tabloid newspaper, and a chat with Prince Philip.
The letter has been in a private collection for the past 25 years and will be auctioned off on February 13.
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Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, recently visited the Granada Studios set of “Coronation Street”. In honor of the soap opera’s 50th anniversary, Her Royal Highness was presented with a brooch by ITV, the British television company.
The brooch features three gold ducks, a nod to character Hilda Ogden’s three plaster ducks that hang on her wall. The duck decoration has been a part of the set as early as 1960.
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The slick 1960s-era wardrobe for Dan Draper (played by Jon Hamm) and his advertising agency boss, Roger Sterling (John Slattery), were inspired by the late Sir Hardy Amies, the Queen’s favorite couturier.
The popular U.S. show “Mad Men”, a dramatic television series, is set in the 1960s. The show centers on Don Draper, a creative director at the fictional Sterling Cooper. Cicely Gilkey, one of the program’s associate producers, says the suits were “definitely motivated” by Amies’ designs.
It’s a new British invasion!
Prince Michael In Bid to Clear King George’s Name
In more Kent family news, Prince Michael of Kent is to appear in an upcoming TV series about one of history’s – and the monarchy’s – most tragic stories: the murder of the Romanovs.
Prince Michael, a cousin to the Queen, speaks fluent Russian and does a fair amount of business in Russia. His looks are reminiscent of the bearded Tsar Nicholas II, which comes as no surprise – his mother Princess Marina was a descendant of the Romanov clan.
The Russian dynasty was closely entwined with the British royals even before the Prince’s mother, Marina of Greece, married the youngest son of King George V. Tsar Nicholas was a first cousin to King George V himself. Their mothers were sisters, Danish princesses who married into the Russian and British royal families. Princess Dagmar became Tsarina Maria Feodorovna, and Princess Alexandra became Queen Alexandra of Great Britain.
The families were very close, and as World War I toppled monarchies and forced Royal Families to choose sides, King George V was expected to help his cousin. However, the paranoid and bombastic German Kaiser Wilhelm II, cousin to both George and Nicholas, inspired fear and xenophobia of Germans across the globe. Nicholas’ wife, Alexandra, was German, and on top of that she had turned many in the Russian court against her because of her belief in the supernatural and her reliance on the sketchy Rasputin.
Would George give the Tsar asylum and risk his own throne, or leave him to his own devices in Russia? As it turned out, the king’s decision cost his cousin and his family their lives. It’s a decision that Prince Michael now discusses in the television interview.
The program Mystery Files: The Romanovs, airs at 7pm on Thursday, February 11th on National Geographic
Author Info - Mandy is an assistant teacher and a student of history. She is currently in the process of obtaining her Bachelor's Degree in History with an eye on a Master's Degree soon after. Read more from Mandy at her blog, The Royal Representative. Read more from this author
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Anglotopia was founded by Jonathan and Jackie Thomas for people who love Britain - whether it's British TV, Culture, History or Travel - we cover it all. Anglotopia was started to get us back to the UK for a trip and it did that in 2009. Now, the goal is for Anglotopia to make our dream of living in the UK a reality.