Chef Rosemary Shrager and Antiques expert Tim Wonnacott visit The Royal Pavilion Brighton to reveal the story behind 19 year old Queen Victoria's visit during the Christmas Holidays in 1838 – the year she became queen. Tim shows us the extraordinary Chinese style interior and reveals just how it was styled in this way thanks to one of Victoria's predecessors. He also discovers that when Victoria wasn't in the mood for jolly times or the garish interiors had got the better of her, she would retire to her own private apartments where, interestingly, the decor is much plainer than the rest of the house possibly at her request. Perhaps it's an early sign of the serious side of the young queen. From her diary entries we glimpse how reading Dickens helped shape her thoughts about her subjects and we have an insight into the serious minded queen she was becoming. In her diary she writes of reading Oliver Twist and is clearly intrigued by the descriptions of squalid vice, starvation and workhouses. Her special new year's resolution reveals a passion for getting the job right. "Almighty God preserve me safely through this year …and make me daily more fit for my station." Rosemary visits the servants' rooms up inside one of the famous domes, closed to the public, where she hears how Victoria went there to watch fireworks. And in one of the finest Victorian kitchens in the country, chef and food historian Ivan Day helps Rosemary recreate a set of elaborate decorative jellies – all the rage at the time – including a pink champagne jelly made in a typical elaborate Victorian mould, two commemorative jellies and a comic masterpiece.
At the time of this visit Victoria had been married to Albert for 2 years and had given birth to her first two children Princess Victoria and Prince Albert Edward. Amazingly their host, the Earl of Mansfield, had been planning the trip for two years, had problems with cowboy builders along the wa...
Tim Wonnacott and Rosemary Shrager are at Walmer Castle in Kent in the footsteps of Queen Victoria who was 23 years old and had been queen for 5 years when she visited in November of 1842 with Albert and their two children, Edward and Victoria, both under two. It got off to a bad start when the r...
Victoria visited Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire with Prince Albert in 1843. She was just 24 years old but had already been Queen for 6 years. Albert had just received an honorary degree from Trinity College Cambrdige which greatly pleased Victoria as a sign that he was starting to be accepted by ...
