Merry Christmas from the Windsors! Family card featuring a young Queen among fascinating new images showing how royals celebrated festive season through the centuries
- New book ‘A Royal Christmas’ published by Royal Collection release next month
- Features traditions of royals over the centuries including card of a young queen
- One pictures sees a Christmas menu from 1899 including a ‘boar’s head’
A fascinating new book offers a rare glimpse into how the royals have celebrated Christmas over the past centuries.
A Royal Christmas, published by the Royal Collection, details the changing festive traditions of the royal family over the generations, from favourite festive cuisine to touching personal gifts.
Intimate images in the book, due to be released in October, include a Christmas card of young Princess Elizabeth, now Queen, and her sister Princess Margaret.
Another snapshot shows Queen Victoria’s Christmas menu 1899, written in French and offering an influx of lavish courses including boar’s head.
A Royal Christmas, published by the Royal Collection, details the changing festive traditions of the royal family over the generations, and include a Christmas card of young Princess Elizabeth, now Queen, and her sister Princess Margaret
The work also examines the royal family’s influence on Christmas customs, such as the trees first brought by Queen Charlotte- seen above at Osborne House in c 1873
As well as Christmas dinner menus, more than 150 objects, photographs and documents from the Royal Collection and the Royal Archives will feature in the illustrated book, many published for the first time.
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Queen Victoria’s Christmas fare in 1899 was printed on an elaborately decorated menu, written in French and headed ‘Her Majesty’s Dinner’.
It included numerous courses including roast beef, mince pies and plum pudding, as well as an indulgent buffet of Baron of Beef, Game Pie, Woodcock Pie, Brawn, Roast Fowl and Tongue.
23rd December 1944: A beach scene with actors and actresses in ‘Old Mother Red Riding Boots’, a pantomime that is playing at Windsor Castle
Queen Victoria’s Christmas fare in 1899 was printed on an elaborately decorated menu, written in French and headed ‘Her Majesty’s Dinner’. It included numerous courses including roast beef, mince pies and plum pudding, as well as an indulgent buffet of Baron of Beef, Game Pie, Woodcock Pie, Brawn, Roast Fowl and Tongue
On 26 December 1833, Princess Victoria went to Drury Lane Theatre to see a grand Christmas Spectacle called St.George and the Dragon/The Seven Champions of Christendom. In her journal entry of that day, Princess Victoria describes how “Mr. Ducrow’s fight with the dragon, on horseback, was quite beautiful- shown in this watercolour from 1834
King George IV was partial to a plum broth on Christmas Day, made using large quantities of port, brandy, madeira, sherry and claret, while medieval monarchs dined on roast swan and gilded peacocks.
Henry II ate boar’s head, pickled in brine and stuffed, braised and roasted, at his Christmas banquets.
The work also examines the royal family’s influence on Christmas customs, such as the trees first brought by Queen Charlotte from her native Germany and the roast turkey popularised by King Edward VII.
This watercolour by James Roberts, commissioned by Queen Victoria, shows the Queen’s Christmas tree in the State Apartments at Windsor Castle in 1850
Royal gifts detailed in the book include a jewelled brooch, given to Queen Victoria by husband Prince Albert in 1841, which featured an enamel miniature portrait of their first child, Victoria, Princess Royal, in the guise of a cherub
Royal gifts detailed in the book include a jewelled brooch, given to Queen Victoria by husband Prince Albert in 1841, which featured an enamel miniature portrait of their first child, Victoria, Princess Royal, in the guise of a cherub.
Christmas cards were first produced in the UK in the 1840s, and the royal family’s love of the festive season meant they were quick to adopt the new trend.
As well as handmade cards by Queen Victoria’s children, the book includes Christmas cards by the Windsor generation of royals featuring photographs of a young Princess Elizabeth, now Queen, and her sister Princess Margaret.
A volume of Prince Albert’s songs, composed between 1847 and 1853, consisting of settings of verses by his brother Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and the German lyric poet Ludwig Uhland (1787–1862) is seen bound in green velvet
A Christmas hymn composed by Prince Albert: Music composition had formed an important part of Prince Albert’s early musical education, and he developed a talent for composing small scale pieces, such as those featured in this volume.
A Royal Christmas is available from October 18 from royalcollection.org.uk/shop and Royal Collection shops for £9.95, and at various bookshops for £12.95
In the wartime years, Elizabeth and Margaret took part in a series of Christmas pantomimes at Windsor Castle.
They are pictured performing in Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin and Old Mother Red Riding Boots, an original combination of the best parts of different pantomimes.
The book also charts the history of the monarch’s Christmas Broadcast, watched each year by millions of people around the world.
A Royal Christmas is available from October 18 from royalcollection.org.uk/shop and Royal Collection shops for £9.95, and at various bookshops for £12.95.
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