Catherine of Braganza. Boring? Plain? Ineffectual? Think again. Charles II’s wife was a trouser-wearing tastemaker who introduced tea drinking, popularised card games and championed baroque fashion and art. Her salon culture was infamous for its parties, theatricals and frequent trips to the pub. A Catholic queen in a strictly Anglican country, she was the diplomatic […]
Charles II’s Portuguese Queen by Susan Abernethy
Catherine of Braganza has regularly been referred to as ‘the forgotten queen’, and there is much truth in this statement. Following her death in 1705, a fully detailed biography in English remained unwritten until 1915. The last major bio published about her was in Portuguese in 1941 and it has never been translated into English. Despite her sheltered […]
Ravenous: A Life of Barbara Villiers by Andrea Zuvich
Barbara Villiers was a woman so beautiful, so magnetic and so sexually attractive that she captured the hearts of many in Stuart-era Britain. Her beauty is legendary: she became the muse of artists such as Peter Lely, the inspiration of writers such as John Dryden and the lover of John Churchill, the future great military […]
Barbara Villiers, beautiful, powerful… ravenous?
Barbara Villers, Countess of Castlemaine and later Duchess of Cleveland, was one of the most beautiful women of the Restoration period and probably Charles II’s most politically powerful mistress. She had a great appetite for wealth, influence, and handsome men, as Andrea Zuvich, author of Barbara’s biography, Ravenous, explains. The Stuarts, who ruled over Scotland, […]
The Lost Queen by Sophie Shorland
Despite Catherine of Braganza’s crucial place in British history, and that of its Empire, she has since been overshadowed by stories of the king’s many mistresses and forgotten as Charles II’s boring, powerless wife. This could not be further from the truth. Historian Sophie Shorland not only tells the full story of this long-overlooked figure […]
Baby Face, Charles II’s French mistress
Andrew Taylor profiles Louise de Keroualle, the Breton ‘baby faced’ girl who became one of Charles II’s most long-lasting mistresses, Nell Gwynn’s worst enemy — and a French spy. She appears in his latest book, The Shadows of London. Who is often described as the Merry Monarch? The answer of course is Charles II, who […]
The Honours of Scotland
On 5 July, 2023, King Charles and Queen Camilla will be in Scotland for a series of events to mark his coronation. At the high point he will be presented with the Honours of Scotland at a National Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication at St Giles’ Cathedral. The historian Maggie Craig looks back at the […]
Fake news, or the Horrid Popish Plot
The ‘Horrid Popish Plot’, as it was called, was an anti-Catholic conspiracy that flared up in the 1670s; a classic example of fake news infecting the public imagination. Anna Abney examines the bizarre and sometimes shocking events. ‘Since Hell is broke loose, and the Press set a work,By Jesuit, by Jew, by Christian, and Turk; […]