Queen Victoria's Children (Documentary)...



I watched the first two parts of this documentary, and I found it fascinating. Although none of the information is new, it was interesting to hear from Lucinda Hawksley, the author of a new biography of Princess Louise, as well as one of my favorite historians, Helen Rappaport. The other two parts are also available on YouTube.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Joyce McKinney and the Manacled Mormon

Image
“I loved him so much I would ski down Mount Everest naked with a carnation up my nose for the love of that man.” – Joyce McKinney The story of Joyce McKinney and the Manacled Mormon sounds like a Quentin Tarantino film or an episode of South Park. It’s almost unbelievable that the story actually happened; that it wasn’t something that was made up by the National Enquirer or the Globe like all those Big Foot sightings or Bat Boy. They say that truth is stranger than fiction and it is certainly true in this bizarre story of one beauty queen’s obsessive love for a pudgy Mormon missionary. In McKinney’s version she was just trying to save the man she loved from the mind-bending control of a religious cult. In Anderson’s more horrific tale, McKinney held him hostage for 3 days in a remote Devon cottage, chained him to a bed and forced him to have sex with her. Thirty-five years later the story continues to baffle and to titillate, most recently in Errol Morris’s latest documentary Tab...
Read more

The Crown Recap: Episode 4 ‘Act of God’

Image
This episode was all about the Great Smog of 1952 which I had never heard, but was apparently a really big thing.  Having experienced a little bit of London Fog in my lifetime, I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have to deal with the vat of pea soup that was served up in 1952.  I’m not going to lie, this episode felt like a bit of a placeholder, as if the writers wanted to hold off getting to the coronation as long as possible. I wasn’t sure where they were going with it.  What we got was a bit of a deeper glimpse at some of our main characters, particularly Sir Winston Churchill who does not come off very well in this episode. We learn at the beginning of the episode that the whole thing could have been prevented.  Churchill was apparently warned by UK scientists that a great smog was a possibility. Instead, Churchill ignored the warnings by recommending that people continue to burn coal for fuel in an effort to boost the economy. Good intentions, bad id...
Read more

The Crown Recap Episode 3: ‘Windsor’

Image
This episode was slightly different from the previous two episodes with a focus on the Duke of Windsor.  We get a flashback to Edward VIII signing the act of abdication on December 10, 1936 with Wallis Simpson looking over his shoulder and then giving his radio broadcast to the nation. The Duke is played by Alex Jennings who played Prince Charles in the film The Queen (also written by Peter Morgan), as well as Anthony Eden in Churchill’s Secret. He does an excellent job of portraying a man who still acts like a small child even in middle-age, but it also shows some sympathy towards him, cut off from his family. He strikes a rather sad and pathetic figure. Historically, Wallis was not with the Duke when he made his radio broadcast, she’d decamped to the south of France to keep out of the line of fire. There are some lovely moments between the Wallis and Edward in this episode, and the actress playing the role is dressed divinely.  Meanwhile the young Princess Elizabeth and Prin...
Read more