Court Life From Within

There now began for me an interesting experience. I had started out to travel and see the sights of Europe, a bride of twenty-two, with a mind in some ways older than my age, as...

What interests--fascinates--the student of contemporary humanity rather than of contemporary politics is to what extent the war will either advance or set us back as a civilisat...

In the present Tsar, Nicholas II., one finds a type of sovereign not only different from either King Edward or the Kaiser, but, in my experience, unique. Sovereigns may have mom...

After hearing King Edward’s opinion of his nephew, I was eager to meet the Kaiser. I was never more eager to meet any sovereign. And there was none who ever made such an impress...

It is in life as it is in travelling, that you go sometimes with such unreflecting interest in the mere passing-by of the incidents of Time that you arrive unaware of your desti...

This was the testimony to the charm of Norway which Queen Maud gave me, when I saw her in her little home near Christiania in the autumn of 1913. She spoke with enthusiasm of he...

In speaking of one’s past it is difficult not to take a present point of view; and when I say that being a Royal person in Spain had its serious aspects--because I could not lov...

Once, when I was making an official visit to the South of Spain with my brother (who was then King), we were told of a gentleman of the Province of Sevilla who had had a talking...

I suppose that no one who has not lived at a Court will believe how narrow in its interests the royal life can be. It is the life of a little family isolated by an impervious et...

It was during these years of travel in Europe that I was offered the opportunity of going to America to represent the Throne of Spain at the World’s Fair that was to be held in...

If our fortunes had carried us directly from Paris to stay with my brother in the palace of Madrid, perhaps I should have found myself still caged there. But freedom is only by...

Will democracy ever rule in some countries? I will not dare to prophesy, only in so far as there is a tendency gradually spreading which gives hope that in the end it will perme...

I was at Genoa, and one spring morning I strolled through a network of narrow streets to the harbour. The sea was as blue as a turquoise, gleaming like a jewel in the sunshine,...