Madame Guillotine
Kill them all if they won't eat cake.
-
Witchy Mary Tudor from the Warner Bros Harry Potter studio tour near London.
We went yesterday and it is AMAZING.
-
A portrait of Queen Victoria by Winterhalter. This painting has been rarely seen until now as its ornate frame required such extensive renovation work. It’s now been restored to its former glory and is on display in Kensington Palace.
(Source: madameguillotine.org.uk)
-
Amazing Princess Diana wallpaper designed by Julie Verhoeven for a display devoted to the late princess at Kensington Palace. I want it for my sitting room but my husband is rather less keen…
It’s incredible though - from a distance it looks like abstract patterns.
(Source: madameguillotine.org.uk)
-
Snippets from some of Queen Victoria’s ball gowns, Kensington Palace.
-
-
Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Louise in her wedding dress, Kensington Palace.
-
-
-
Sculpture in the King’s gallery at Kensington Palace, London.
-
I love this pretty portrait of the young Marie Antoinette, painted in around 1774 by Jean Martial Frédou, an artist who was first painter for her brother in law, the Comte de Provence from 1776. It’s a lovely painting but as usual, the little Queen complained that it failed to capture a likeness. I’m reading her letters to her mother at the moment and there seems to be a lot of angst about portraits not quite getting it right. Poor Marie Antoinette!
-
I swore that I’d NEVER write a sequel to my novel about the young Marie Antoinette but five thousand sold copies, many fab reviews and a LOT of nagging about ‘When’s the sequel coming out?’ has kind of changed my mind. What can I say? I like to listen to my readers and I also kind of need money for perfume, books and hot pink hair-dye.
I thought I’d be fed up returning to the world of Marie Antoinette’s Versailles for a fourth time, especially as I SWORE that the third time was the last but I’m actually having a LOT of fun. The sequel begins with Marie Antoinette’s wedding day and er ends at some unspecified point that I haven’t yet decided.
Best of all - it means I’m off to Paris and Versailles yet again this May to do some ‘research’. Ah, it’s such a hard life being a historical fiction writer…
-
1862 imagined portrait of Louis XVII by Luigi Aspetti. It was presented to Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) by the Governor of Malta in 1862 and is now in the Royal Collection.
-
‘How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?‘ — the last words of Sophie Scholl before her execution by the Nazis on the 22nd of February 1943.
-
Photograph of Mlle Beatrice as Mary Queen of Scots in Mary Stuart at the Princess’ Theatre.
