The queen lived a full, amazing life with brio—and photographers were there as she toured the world, and appeared alongside her family at occasions both celebratory and solemn.

QUEEN Elizabeth II is recreated in clay for her first memorial statue — with a beloved corgi at her feet. Sculptor Hywel Pratley, 51, is putting the final touches to the 7ft high and 800kg work of …

As the Queen marks 70 years on the throne, we present an image from every year of her life.

The J. Paul Getty Museum toasts Queen Victoria's forward-thinking with an exhibition of the Royal Photograph Collection.

See photos from the British monarch’s 61 years on the throne.

In an era of unbridled patriarchy, when women were advocating passionately for the right to vote, Queen Victoria was such a formidable figure that an entire period is named after her: the Victorian age. When we think of Victorian England, Victorian houses, or the Victorian style, we tend to think…

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Windsor Castle from the Thames River, GWW Photochrom print, Circa 1890-1900. Click on link above for more information on the Photochrom Process [From my own collection] During Queen Victoria's long reign she made use a number of royal residences, primarily Windsor Castle in Berkshire, Buckingham Palace in London, Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, Holyrood House in Edinburgh, and Balmoral Castle in the Scottish Highlands. This series primarily features 'behind the scenes' pre1901 images from Queen Victoria's Private Apartments which will attempt to portray something of Her Majesty's secluded world away from the public gaze. Actual original extant photographs of Queen Victoria when resident at each Royal residence are also featured. The quality of all images varies considerably. My first blog in this series features images taken in the Private Apartments and Semi-State Apartments at Windsor Castle, having been designed by Wyattville for King George IV after his coronation in 1820. "[King] George persuaded Parliament to vote him £300,000 for restoration (£245 million in 2008 terms). ... the architect Jeffry Wyattville was selected, and work commenced in 1824. Wyattville's own preference ran to Gothic architecture, but George, who had led the reintroduction of the French Rococo style to England at Carlton House, preferred a blend of periods and styles, and applied this taste to Windsor." These views mainly follow a route from the Private Dining Room adjoining the State Apartments at the end of the North Terrace, then along the East Wing of the Upper Ward, and round to the George IV Gate in the South Wing. Not all the private apartments are pictured. When King Edward VII ascended the throne in 1901 he immediately set about re-modernising Windsor Castle with "enthusiasm and zest". Many of the rooms in the Upper Ward were de-cluttered and redecorated for the first time in many years. "peering into cabinets; ransacking drawers; clearing rooms formerly used by the Prince Consort and not touched since his death; dispatching case-loads of relics and ornaments to a special room in the Round Tower ... destroying statues and busts of John Brown... throwing out hundreds of 'rubbishy old coloured photographs' ... [and] rearranging pictures". Admittedly many of the rooms were overladen with decoration and Victorian era clutter and benefitted from a general clean up. Queen Mary also left her mark on most of the Royal residences with one of her favourite past-times being "redecorating and re-arranging rooms" - much to the despair of her staff. As a connoisseur of the arts she did in fact take a keen interest in the Royal collection of furniture and art, both restoring and adding to it. The Royal Library The Royal Library is located in what was once Queen Elizabeth the First's Gallery at the North West end of the State Apartments. The carved stone chimneypiece at right was installed in 1583. The Billiard Room, Taken 21 Nov 1893 The Billiard Room is rather inconveniently situated on the Ground Floor of the State Apartments facing the North Terrace and directly under the west end of the Throne Room in the State Apartments above. The billiard table itself is made from wood salvaged from HMS Royal George, which sank at Spithead in 1782 with the loss of 800 lives, being raised in 1841. It was at the time considered by some to be inappropriate and in bad taste to have a billiard table made of wood from the wreck. But despite the wood then being ordered to be used in a new Royal Chapel instead it appears that this directive was in the end inexplicably not carried out. The Gothic Private Dining Room, 1848. A Chromolithograph by Joseph Nash The Gothic design Private Dining Room is located in the Prince of Wales's Tower at the North East end of the State Apartments and is the work of A.C. Pugin and his son Augustus Welby Pugin. The Private Chapel, 1848 A Chromolithograph by Joseph Nash The Private Chapel is located between St George's Hall to the west and The Crimson Drawing Room to the east to which it shares a dividing wall. Queen Victoria preferred short and simple religious services and despite being Head of the Church of England she personally considered herself more aligned with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland than the Episcopalian [Anglican] Church of England. She also supported the 'Protestant intentions' of the Public Worship Bill of 1874 which had the intent of purging the Church of England of High Church practices which made its liturgies resemble those of the Roman Catholic Church. Her decision to worship at Crathie Kirk near Balmoral Castle initially caused a scandal, particularly when it was discovered that she had taken Communion there in November 1873. Victoria strongly asserted that as Queen of Scotland, she was also entitled to worship in a Scottish [Presbyterian] church, and furthermore, Crathie Kirk was the closest church to Balmoral Castle. The Crimson Drawing Room looking south, 1848 The Crimson Drawing Room, being a semi-state room, is located in the East Wing next to the Private Dining Room. The Private Chapel is behind the wall on the right. The walls are hung with crimson coloured damask. The Green Drawing Room looking north, circa 1900 Next lies the Green Drawing Room with interconnecting doors through to the Crimson Drawing Room on the North side and the smaller White Drawing Room on the South side. All are semi-state rooms. The Green Drawing Room had originally been built as a library with low bookcases around the walls, being converted to a formal Drawing Room at some time during the mid 19th century. The walls are hung with green damask with gilding on the decorative plasterwork. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at breakfast or luncheon in The White Drawing Room, looking north. In early years, both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert took breakfast, and sometimes luncheon, in the White Drawing Room. In later years the Oak Room was used for this purpose, especially after the death of Prince Albert in 1861 The Grand Corridor looking south. Note the row of statues on plinths. The Grand Corridor connects the Private and Guest Apartments which lie in the East and South Wings of the Castle. The Grand Corridor had never existed prior to Wyattville's rebuilding of the Castle from the late 1820's. The East Wing of Windsor Castle and showing the formal East Terrace Garden. A Photochrome image, circa 1890's The Private Dining Room lies in the Prince of Wales's Tower at far right, then (moving left), the Crimson Drawing Room (two small and one large window in the middle), The Green Drawing Room (two small and one medium sized window in the middle) in the smaller Chester Tower, the White Drawing Room (one medium sized window), then the Prince Consort's apartment's through to Queen Victoria's apartments which lie from the King's [Victoria] Tower at far left, leading along the South Wing . The decorated Private Apartments, featuring a "distinctive gilt and gorgeousness style", were the work of the Decorators "Morel and Seddon". King George IV moved into these apartments in December 1828, even before other State Rooms within the Castle were finished. The Last Moments of Prince Albert, The Prince Consort, as depicted in the Blue Room, 1861 Prince Albert's rooms were located from the south wall of The White Drawing Room through to the King's (Victoria) Tower at the South East corner of the Castle. The Blue Room itself adjoined the White Drawing Room, the walls being hung with blue damask with matching curtains. On the express orders of Queen Victoria the room was to remain as it was when Prince Albert died here in 1861. Fresh flowers, clothes and hot water continued to be carefully laid out each day and the sheets changed. In the latter years of the 19th century the curtaining had became faded, frayed and rotten and desperately needed to be replaced. It was 'fearfully' replaced with new silk faded down to the original. This fact was carefully kept from Queen Victoria who thankfully never noticed the change due to her increasingly bad eyesight. After the accession to the throne of Kind Edward VII he had this room totally redecorated to serve as his Study (it serves this purpose today). The Blue Room after the death of Prince Albert. The Blue Room, from a watercolour, 1865 The ceiling was painted with angels and stars after Prince Albert's death but otherwise everything remained as it had been in his lifetime. Prince Albert's Bedroom - The Blue Room, circa 1880's -1890's Prince Albert's Sitting Room (later the Queen's Closet), 1861 Queen Victoria and members of her family mourning the Prince Consort. [Left to Right] Victoria [Empress Frederick of Prussia], Princess Alice, Queen Victoria & Prince Alfred. Taken by William Baimbridge, March 1862 The Queen's Closet (previously Prince Albert's Sitting Room) Queen Victoria's Bedroom It is recorded that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert shared a bedroom at Windsor Castle until his last illness where he died in The Blue Room shown above. Queen Victoria's Bedroom, Sitting Room and Boudoir (Dressing Room) were all located within The King's [Victoria] Tower in the South East corner of the castle. Queen Victoria at her desk. Taken at Windsor Castle, 1891 Queen Victoria undertook her state work, reading and writing at a desk set up in her Private Sitting Room. Queen Victoria's Dressing Room, 1850's Queen Victoria's Dressing Room, 1850's This is the same image as shown above but is reversed. As to which image is the correct way round is unknown. The bottom image however is less distinct and may have been photographed from the original then the glass plate negative inadvertently reversed when the printing block was created. Queen Victoria's Private Sitting Room by Joseph Nash, as shown in the mid 19th Century The Queen's Sitting Room, 1868 [Source : The Royal Collection] Queen Victoria's Private Sitting Room, 1890's Queen Victoria's Private Sitting Room. Queen Victoria knits while Princess Beatrice reads to her. Photographed by Mary Steen in 1895. Queen Victoria's Sitting Room lay within the King's Tower at the South East corner of the Castle with the main window facing south with a view of Windsor Great Park and The Long Walk. Directly above her were the Royal nurseries. By the end of the 19th century her Private Sitting Room had become full of ornaments, photographs and mementoes, "the orderly confusion of beautiful bric-a-brac". The Angle of the Grand Corridor, 1846 This view shows the angle in the Grand Corridor and is shown looking north. Access to the Oak Room shown below is at some point around the corner on the left. Queen Victoria, Princess Henry of Batttenberg [Princess Beatrice], Prince Henry of Battenberg, & their three children at luncheon in the Oak Dining Room as two uniformed Indian servants look on. Queen Victoria normally took lunch and dinner in this room if there were no state occasions. Taken 1895. Another view of the Oak Dining Room, published in 1897. Over the mantelpiece hangs a portrait of the Queen, while to the left can be seen one of the two Gobelins tapestries hung in this room depicting "The Death of Meleager" (visible) and "The Hunting of the Calydonian Boar", having been presented to the Queen by King Louis Philippe of France. [Image courtesy of C. Duclos, Paris] The Queen's Private Audience Chamber, 1867 [Source : The Royal Collection] The Queen's Private Audience Chamber, taken 1890s In this room in the South Range, close to her own apartments, Queen Victoria "gave audience to her Prime Ministers and other public figures". On the walls can be seen the portraits of the family of H.M. King George III painted by Thomas Gainsborough. A Christmas display and tree set up in a room in the South Wing Another Christmas display, as painted by James Roberts, 1850 A lithograph of Queen Victoria distributing Egyptian War Medals to Officers and Men of the Expeditionary Force, 21st Nov 1882 A guest room in the South Wing overlooking The Long Walk. The Coffee Room above the George IV Gate A Lithograph of a Garden Party in the grounds of Windsor Castle, 1870 Bibliography : - "Life of Queen Victoria", T Nelson & Sons, London, 1897 (from my personal collection). - Wikipedia - Various written and Internet sources. - Images are only from my own personal collection where specifically indicated. These may be freely copied for non-commercial use providing a link is given back to this page. - All other images have been "collected" over the last couple of years and I have not always recorded the source. Most appear to be in the public domain or are only low resolution 'preview' images however if copyright has been infringed please advise me so that I can remove them or provide a link.

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When rating movie wardrobes, I deduct points for both period dramas and musicals. Allow me to direct your attention to the list of Academy Awards for Best Costume Design. In the past fifteen years, the only winners that weren't period dramas or musicals were Lord Of The Rings and Alice In Wonderland, both fantasies featuring very ostentatious costuming (not that I begrude LOTR its win, which was thoroughly deserved). Is this because all the designers working on films with a contemporary (or futuristic) setting were incompetent? I doubt it. It's similar to the often-bemoaned problem of hammy "Oscar bait" performances -- At this point, putting Keira Knightley or Helena Bonham Carter in a corset and crinoline is the costuming equivalent of getting Philip Seymour Hoffman to play a mentally-ill Nazi. A totes realistic portrayal of 18th century womanhood. As far as I can tell, the main points taken into consideration when judging movie costumes are these: 1. Authenticity. This mostly concerns period dramas, but since they make up the vast majority of costume award nominations (not that awards are the be-all and end-all of cinema, but still.) it's probably the most important point. A lot of fuss is made over historically accurate costuming, which I'd immediately dismiss as pointless. First of all, you can't make a truly historically-accurate costume for anything set before, oh, 1850 or so, for these reasons: Lack of availability of detailed/accurate documentation of day-to-day clothing. Only the rich had portraits, and those would be idealised. There is no such thing as a "casual" painting, and until you reach the age of photography, it's difficult to find pictures of what most people (ie, poor people) would look like in real life. Methods of clothing production are completely different now than they were even 100 years ago, and many of the materials used are now unavailable or stupidly inconvenient to produce. And what's the point in going to the effort of hand-squeezing dye to make your own cloth? Nobody watching the film is going to know or care. No one except fashion historians, who probably enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean as much as the next person, and therefore don't give a crap. Beauty standards change so drastically that modern actors aren't even the same shape as people even 50 years ago, never mind 500, making "historical authenticity" a moot point in the first place. Try looking at a portrait of a 18th century "beauty" some time. They look weird as shit. Diet was completely different, people had babies at 14, every second person had smallpox or syphilis, all the aristocrats wore Lady Gaga wigs and bathed like once a month... it wasn't pretty. Good luck getting Gwyneth Paltrow to do that for the next kings-and-crinolines epic. Painting of Queen Victoria's coronation. Obviously, there are no photos. Emily Blunt in The Young Victoria. A lot of effort went into making this costume as authentic as possible, including handling the original gown in the archive at Kensington palace. In an interview about the process of making this gown, Sally Powell (a nine times nominee and three time winner -- all for historical dramas -- of costume design Academy Awards) describes perfectly the archetypal historical drama costume process: "...made completely from scratch with us creating the fabric first. Having seen the original in the archive, it was a challenge to recreate this. We did this by buying a plain fabric with a metallic thread in it, then dying it to the right shade of gold, then all the intricate embroidery was recreated by printing and hand painting." That's bloody amazing. You're impressed, aren't you? I'm impressed. All that work! And you can't deny that the gown looks fantastic. It's a pity they didn't go to the trouble of making the rest of the movie just as authentic -- including rotten teeth, for example (an aspect of "history" often mysteriously ignored by filmmakers), or an actress who, you know, looked anything like Queen Victoria. Why is it that people value historical accuracy in costuming so much higher than in any other aspect of a film? Take a look at the wikipedia entry for "historical accuracy in Gladiator" some time. That movie won an Oscar for best costume design as well. FUCK YEAH I DESERVED THAT AWARD, CHECK OUT THIS BITCHIN' SKIRT 2. Detail/work. A lot of emphasis always seems to be put on the "Keira Knightley in a crinoline" costumes and the horde of peons who were employed for ten years to sew on each individual seed-pearl. Why? Perhaps this is sacriligious to say, but... does that really matter? Does it improve the experience of watching the film? Would anyone care if each seed pearl was in fact hot-glue-gunned on by an intern? Probably not. They're too busy discreetly wiping away a tear as Keira spurns the latest of her interchangeable onscreen love-interests. In a way, I can more easily understand the vast numbers of people employed to make "realistic" costumes for Lord Of The Rings (most famously the artisans who wore off their fingerprints while making chain-mail by hand) because the core audience for those films were nerds, ie the kind of people who are detail-oriented and obsessive enough to appreciate it. The core audience of films like The Duchess and The Young Victoria? Probably not all that nerdy. You look fantastic, Elrond. In Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the costumes were made on a tiny budget (including one dress made from flip-flops, pictured above) by a handful of people, and yet were far more fitting and individual to the characters and setting than the "accurate" yet personality-free costumes found in many historical dramas. The costumes of Priscilla were truly original and imaginative, although I admit they do fit into my final category of Oscar nomination staples... 3. Sparkles! There's something about people dancing around in shiny outfits that taps straight into the animal hindbrain and makes it go, "Yay!" Omigod I look AMAZING! Sparkles!! This is the reason why musicals are the other main recipient of comments to the effect of "wow, those costumes were brilliant!" Well, yes, they probably were, because a large amount of time and money went into them, but what you really meant was, "wow, those costumes are really noticeable!" With musicals, you can't help but notice that people are wearing a costume, which in any other type of film is the exact opposite of what you should be going for. In most other films, consciously noting the costumes probably means that you've been distracted from the actual content. The fourth wall has been breached. The one thing I think actually matters. Having read the last few paragraphs, you probably think I have no respect for the hard work and talent of costume designers. Not true! In fact, I am in awe of a great many historical films for precisely the same reason most people are: the amount of effort that's been put into their historical authenticity. (Also, the quantity of pretty sparkles.) However, I think there's one fundamental element of costume design that is rarely taken into account not only by judges during awards season but by most casual viewers, and that is characterisation. The most important thing about any costume is its fidelity to the character who is wearing it. You can have years of experience in medieval embroidery under your belt but still turn out a totally inappropriate set of costumes for a King Arthur movie if you haven't thought about the characters. Is this person messy or neat? Do they even care about their appearance? (A possibility that clothing/appearance-obsessed people may well forget, on occasion.) Is it practical or realistic to have them wear a different outfit in every scene? In films set in the last 30 years, this is more important than ever because of the wider range of clothing available to everyone. In a film like The Young Victoria everyone's clothes would be slightly different because they'd all be sewn and fitted by hand but they would be almost identical in style because to the unschooled eye, fashions were far more uniform until the 20th century. However, a similar film about the events surrounding Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding would require just as much costuming but a far wider range of styles. The Oscar would probably go to the one set 150 years in the past, though, because you'd notice the costumes. So, next time you're watching a movie set in 1995, or 2005, or the amorphous "present day" of most relationship dramas and action movies, take a look at what everyone's wearing. And see if it's more or less authentic in relation to the characters' personalities than the costumes worn in a film set a century earlier.

This article was written by Michelle. Studying queenship and the roles of queens consort is a tradition that has been formed, especially in later years. In international historiography, queens consort have primarily been seen as wives and mothers to the king. Furthermore, during the 1970s and 1980s social history made royal history unpopular, because historians [read more]

After being kept for a night at the palace, the Queen's coffin will move to Westminster Hall to lie in state - with hundreds of thousands expected to file past.

Every 9 years of the Queen’s life, from 0 to 90.

On September 9, 2015, the Queen will become the longest-reigning monarch in British history when she overtakes the record set by her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria.

Delving into the world of early to mid victorian fashion.

On 23 September 1896, Queen Victoria broke George III’s record of 21,644 days on the throne. Queen Victoria's record (23,226 days) has now itself been broken, and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is still going strong.

Remembering the late monarch’s life and decades-long reign.

Britain's monarch was officially crowned in 1953; however she technically became Queen a year earlier, after the death of her father King George.

As the next in line to inherit the crown, royal heirs are entitled to a number of privileges, but there are also customs and traditions in place within the British monarchy.

See photos from the British monarch’s 61 years on the throne.

In an era of unbridled patriarchy, when women were advocating passionately for the right to vote, Queen Victoria was such a formidable figure that an entire period is named after her: the Victorian age. When we think of Victorian England, Victorian houses, or the Victorian style, we tend to think…

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