Royal Lodge, Windsor
Royal House of Windsor Series
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Royal Lodge, Windsor
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Narrated by:
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Lorna Bennett
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By:
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Helen Cathcart
About this listen
Royal Lodge is one of a scattered group of dwellings, mansions, forts, and follies in the southern recesses and environs of Windsor Great Park which have served royal pleasures and private needs ever since the carefree days of Charles II. It has been the home of artists and courtiers and farmers and foresters, the picnic pavilion of queens and the private abode of two kings.
Nestled amongst groves of ancient woodland and landscaped gardens, it is where the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth) made their home in 1932 and where their two young daughters—Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret—played happily in the Little House, Y Bwthyn Bach, in the garden.
Meticulously researched, royal chronicler Helen Cathcart paints a vivid picture of the evolving architecture, changing decor, and esteemed inhabitants of Royal Lodge from earliest days through to the mid-twentieth century.
Royal Lodge, Windsor is a superb narrative history of life at Royal Lodge through the centuries.
©1966 The Estate of Helen Cathcart (P)2023 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Beginnig of My Interest on the Royal Family
- By A. Bauza Higuera on 12-30-22
By: Marion Crawford, and others
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The Housekeeper's Tale
- The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House
- By: Tessa Boase
- Narrated by: Tessa Boase
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 239
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 216
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Story4 out of 5 stars 214
The Housekeeper's Tale reveals the personal sacrifices, bitter disputes and driving ambition that shaped these women's careers. Using secret diaries, unpublished letters, and the neglected service archives of our stately homes, Tessa Boase tells the extraordinary stories of five working women who ran some of Britain's most prominent households.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Utterly intriguing
- By Pamela Jane on 09-14-17
By: Tessa Boase
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The Glitter and the Gold
- The American Duchess - In Her Own Words
- By: Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 162
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 144
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Story4 out of 5 stars 145
Consuelo Vanderbilt was young, beautiful and the heir to a vast family fortune. She was also deeply in love with an American suitor when her mother chose instead for her to fulfill her social ambitions and marry an English Duke. Leaving her life in America, she came to England as the Duchess of Marlborough in 1895 and took up residence in her new home: Blenheim Palace. The ninth Duchess gives unique first-hand insight into life at the very pinnacle of English society in the Edwardian era.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Facinating Story- Terrible reading
- By Ashley D on 03-27-14
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The Last Castle
- The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home
- By: Denise Kiernan
- Narrated by: Denise Kiernan
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 988
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 880
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 876
Orphaned at a young age, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser claimed lineage from one of New York's best known families. She grew up in Newport and Paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House. Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Very factual
- By Jennifer on 11-28-17
By: Denise Kiernan
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George VI and Elizabeth
- The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy
- By: Sally Bedell Smith
- Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor
- Length: 22 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 77
A revelatory account of how the loving marriage of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth saved the monarchy during World War II, and how they raised their daughter to become Queen Elizabeth II, based on exclusive access to the Royal Archives—from the bestselling author of Elizabeth the Queen and Prince Charles.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great telling of their lives
- By Nancy on 04-15-23
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George and Marina
- Duke and Duchess of Kent
- By: Christopher Warwick
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4 out of 5 stars 71
For eight brief years, before he was tragically killed in a mysterious air crash during the Second World War, Prince George, Duke of Kent, son of King George V and Queen Mary, and his beautiful wife, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, were the British monarchy's - indeed, high society's - most glamorous royal couple; and as golden royal icons, they are still remembered.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engaging
- By Jean on 06-02-17
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Royal Sisters
- Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret
- By: Anne Edwards
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 126
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 126
In Royal Sisters, Anne Edwards, author of the best-selling Vivien Leigh: A Biography and Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor, has written the first dual biography of Elizabeth, the princess who was to become Queen, and her younger sister, Margaret, who was to be her subject. From birth to maturity, they were the stuff of which dreams are made.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Where's The Rest?
- By Simone on 12-19-17
By: Anne Edwards
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To Marry an English Lord
- By: Gail MacColl, Carol McD. Wallace
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 427
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 383
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Story4 out of 5 stars 384
From the Gilded Age until 1914, more than 100 American heiresses invaded Britannia and swapped dollars for titles - just like Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, the first of the Downton Abbey characters Julian Fellowes was inspired to create after reading To Marry An English Lord. Filled with vivid personalities, gossipy anecdotes, grand houses, and a wealth of period details-plus quotes and the finer points of Victorian and Edwardian etiquette - To Marry An English Lord is social history at its liveliest and most accessible.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not Great on Audio
- By Lynne on 03-10-16
By: Gail MacColl, and others
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Those Wild Wyndhams
- Three Sisters at the Heart of Power
- By: Claudia Renton
- Narrated by: Claudia Renton
- Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 120
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 105
They were confidantes to British prime ministers, poets, writers, and artists, their lives entwined with the most celebrated and scandalous figures of the day, from Oscar Wilde to Henry James. They were the lovers of great men - or men of great prominence... They lived in a world of luxurious excess, a world of splendor at 44 Belgrave Square and later at the even more vast Clouds, the exquisite Wiltshire house on 4,000 acres, the "house of the age", designed in 1876 by the visionary architect Philip Webb - the model for Henry James' The Spoils of Poynton.
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5 out of 5 stars
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SLOW START BUT STICK WITH THIS ONE
- By The Louligan on 01-22-19
By: Claudia Renton
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Wait for Me!
- Memoirs
- By: Deborah Mitford Duchess of Devonshire
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 125
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 92
Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, is the youngest of the famously witty brood that includes the writers Jessica and Nancy, who wrote when Deborah was born, "How disgusting of the poor darling to go and be a girl." Deborah's effervescent memoir chronicles her remarkable life, from an eccentric but happy childhood in the Oxfordshire countryside, to tea with Adolf Hitler and her controversially political sister Unity in 1937, to her marriage to the second son of the Duke of Devonshire.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The last of the Mitford Sisters
- By Irene on 01-11-11
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Martha Washington
- An American Life
- By: Patricia Brady
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
With this revelatory and painstakingly researched book, Martha Washington, the invisible woman of American history, at last gets the biography she deserves. In place of the domestic frump of popular imagination, Patricia Brady resurrects the wealthy, attractive, and vivacious young widow who captivated the youthful George Washington. And even as it brings Martha Washington into sharper and more accurate focus, this sterling life sheds light on her marriage, her society, and the precedents she established for future First Ladies.
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5 out of 5 stars
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DAR Book Club
- By Kimberly Dillard on 12-26-23
By: Patricia Brady
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The Husband Hunters
- American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy
- By: Anne de Courcy
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 681
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 581
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 578
Towards the end of the 19th century and for the first few years of the 20th, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege, and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, 50 years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known "Dollar Princess", married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bondfide Valuable History Lesson
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. on 09-21-18
By: Anne de Courcy
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Black Diamonds
- The Downfall of an Aristocratic Dynasty and the Fifty Years That Changed England
- By: Catherine Bailey
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 64
When the sixth Earl Fitzwilliam died in 1902, he left behind the second largest estate in 20th-century England, valued at more than three billion dollars in today's money - a lifeline to the tens of thousands of people who worked either in the family's coal mines or on their expansive estate. The earl also left behind four sons, and the family line seemed assured. But was it?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Could use a good editor...
- By Phyllis on 04-30-18
By: Catherine Bailey
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Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey
- The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle
- By: The Countess of Carnarvon
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 796
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 709
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Story4 out of 5 stars 703
Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the real-life inspiration and setting for Julian Fellowes's Emmy Award-winning PBS series, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants: Lady Almina, the fifth Countess of Carnarvon. Drawing on a rich store of materials from the archives of Highclere Castle, including diaries, letters, and photographs, the current Lady Carnarvon has written a transporting story of this fabled home on the brink of war.
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4 out of 5 stars
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the lowdown on Downton times
- By connie on 03-17-12
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The Queen and Di
- The Untold Story
- By: Ingrid Seward
- Narrated by: Emily Gray
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 140
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 121
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 124
The Manchester Evening News declared, it took "a biographer like Ingrid Seward to unleash a sober, challenging glimpse into the one relationship of such scrutiny." That relationship is the complex, troubled, and often turbulent association between Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Quite one sided.
- By Beatnik RN on 02-17-15
By: Ingrid Seward
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Matriarch
- Queen Mary and the House of Windsor
- By: Anne Edwards
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,366
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,122
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,119
The life of Princess May of Teck is one of the great Cinderella stories in history. From a family of impoverished nobility, she was chosen by Queen Victoria as the bride for her eldest grandson, the scandalous Duke of Clarence, heir to the throne, who died mysteriously before their marriage. Despite this setback, she became queen, mother of two kings, grandmother of the current queen, and a lasting symbol of the majesty of the British throne.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow! Did not want this to end!
- By Susan Nall Sheehan on 07-16-17
By: Anne Edwards