In the Spring of 1884 Empress Elisabeth of Austria, better known as Sisi, spent six weeks in the Netherlands for medical treatment. She also planned several visits to interesting places, like the Artis Zoo, the Rijksmuseum, the Dutch palaces. The Empress was on a private visit. King Willem III and Queen Emma were told of […]
When I recently checked the database of my public library for a certain book, I ended up with a search for “adel” (noble). Of course I discovered a real treasure of books about noble subjects and started ordering. Somehow they all managed to reach the library at the same time and now I have the […]
Photo : RVD/J.M. Rousel.
Nowadays when there has been a big royal wedding there will be at least one wedding book, probably even more than one. And that has been the case already for many, many years. The eldest wedding book in my possession is from 1901. In that year the publishing house “D. Bolle” in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, […]
Copyright: Anna-Lena Ahlström/The Swedish Royal Court
In April 2016 Princess Christina, Mrs Magnuson – the youngest sister of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden – published her book “Dagar på Drottningholm”. I thought actually that it was only published in Swedish, but it turns out that almost at the same time also an English version was published, a fact that I […]
The opening weekend of the exhibition “1917. Romanovs & Revolution” at the Hermitage Amsterdam, The Netherlands, started off brilliantly. The opening was on Friday 3 February 2017 and afterwards followed a busy weekend with already many visitors. On Saturday there was a special event for the Friends of the Hermitage with a very well-attended lecture […]
It took a few weeks, but it was worth the wait for the book “The Romanovs 1613-1918” by Simon Sebag Montefiore that was published in 2016. I decided to borrow it from the library in Dutch, as the reviews had made me curious. Especially as of course it soon will be 100 years ago since […]
Nowadays a lot of information can be found online, but not everything and there are still wonderful genealogy books being published with extensive royal and noble genealogies that are a must to have for royal and noble genealogists. They don’t come cheap, but some are really worth buying. The original “Almanach de Gotha” was published […]
As I wrote earlier this week I have been to a holiday fair here in Groningen last weekend. On Friday I received a package from Jellie of CeskySight, whom I had met there. They rent holiday houses and apartments in Czechia, but their website (in Dutch) also has lots of information about Czechia itself. I […]
In many European countries there is no Christmas possible without showing the three Sissi-films from the 1950s with Romy Schneider as Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Karl-Heinz Böhm as Emperor Franz Joseph on television and many people watch year after year. The overly romantic films Sissi (1955), Sissi – The Young Empress (1956) and Sissi […]
Late October 2016 the book “Juliana, vorstin in een mannenwereld” (Juliana, Queen in a men’s world) by the Dutch writer and sociologist Jolande Withuis was published by publisher De Bezige Bij. As the book received lots of publicity, also my foreign visitors were rather interested in hearing a bit more about the book. Although the […]
