Press Release from The Prince of Wales

Business in the Community: Transforming Business, Transforming Communities

11th January 2011

The Prince of Wales has been President of Business in the Community for 25 years.

The charity works to promote corporate responsibility among businesses and works with them to create a sustainable future for us all.

His Royal Highness is a firm believer that the actions we take now will affect generations to come.

In the following video, The Prince of Wales pays tribute to the work of Business in the Community and its leadership teams, highlighting a number of the charity's projects.

http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/newsandgallery/focus/business_in_the_community_transforming_business_transforming_1099551148.html

Crown Prince Alexander Invited to the National Prayer Service

THEIR ROYAL HIGHNESSES INVITED TO NATIONAL PRAYER BREAKFAST IN WASHINGTON

Belgrade, 12 January 2011 –The Members of the Congress of the United States of America have invited Their Royal Highnesses Crown Prince Alexander and Crown Princess Katherine to the 59th Annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC, Thursday 3 February, with the President of the United States and other national leaders in the Executive, Judicial and Legislative Branches of the United Sates Sates government. 

http://www.royalfamily.org/statements/state-det/state-2343_eng.html

ERHJ LXVII, Issue 13.5 Off to the Printers!

The latest installment of the European Royal History Journal is off to the printers.

In it we have included some very interesting articles, as usual, written by among today's most talented and recognized royal authors.

The articles included in ERHJ LXXVII are:

1. The Tsar’s Daughters in Exile – Xenia and Olga of Russia, By Coryne Hall

2. Obituary: The Hereditary Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg, by Natasha Erbury

3. Dora Coburg: The Life and Times of Princess Dorothea of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha (Part 2), By Olivier Defrance & Arturo E. Beéche

4. Wedding Bells in Brussels – The Duke of Parma Weds Ms. Anne-Marie Gualterievan Weezel By Netty Leistra

5. Karl Friedrich Schinkel – The Royal Architect, By Katrina Warne

6. The Overthrow of King Manuel II of Portugal, By Arturo E. Beéche

7. Book Reviews, By Coryne Hall

8. Collecting Royal Commemorative China: Series 17 – Great Britain, Part 8, By Joe Spiteri

9. Royal News

Issue LXXVII begins mailing on January 17!

In the meantime, we began working on Issue LXXVIII, Volume 13.6, which is scheduled to print in about two weeks if not sooner and will mail by month's end, thus bringing to an end our XIII year in publication, and perhaps the toughest yet. However, with restored health and continued support from you all, we are looking toward a wonderful 2011!

For subscription information, visit our website at:

http://www.eurohistory.com/main.php?process=1

Why the Pahlavis Still Haunt Iranians

When the Pahlavi monarchy was approaching its final days in power in Iran, I was playing with Cabbage Patch Kids dolls in Cupertino, Calif., and thought that my friends' parents who worked for Apple ran an orchard. The diaspora community of Iranians around me talked politics incessantly, and I remember hearing vastly varied things about the Shah of Iran, who lost power in the 1979 revolution. Some of my relatives credited him with great feats, like transforming Tehran into a modern city; one elderly great-aunt kept a portrait of him and his wife, the Empress Farah, on her bedside table. Others called him a torturer, and avoided the Iranian man at the neighborhood pool with the Shah's face tattooed on his shoulder. He was a former agent of the SAVAK, the Shah's dreaded secret service, and he seemed to inspire a shadow of terror even in the California sunshine.

I grew up to study political science and work in Iran as a reporter, and managed to develop an adult understanding of the Pahlavi family's role in Iranian history. But that mature knowledge coexists with all the associations I absorbed as a child. Like so many Iranians, I find my feelings toward the Pahlavis a complex jumble of personal dreams and resentments, and the intensity of my emotions reminds me that they have as much to do with my past, my family and my relationship to history as the royal family itself.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2041031,00.html#ixzz1AkLc5HtO

Royal Calendars at Het Loo Palace

THE PRO JUVENTUTE CALENDARS

‘THE PRO JUVENTUTE KALENDERS’ exhibition that Paleis Het Loo is mounting from 22 January to 8 May 2011 presents an overview of the forty-five years of popular calendars published by the Pro Juventute charitable foundation containing photographs of the Dutch royal family whose proceeds went to support disadvantaged children.

From 1948 to 1992 Stichting Steunfonds Pro Juventute published a calendar every year for a total of 45 years in all. Each month showed a photograph of the royal family that had been donated on the family’s behalf by the government information office. In the first decade these were photographs of the young princesses, Beatrix, Irene, Margriet and Marijke, as they grew up. They were taken during annual photo sessions in and around Soestdijk palace.

The proceeds from the Princesses’ Calendar, as it came to be called, went to help less fortunate children. The Pro Juventute charitable foundation was responsible for arranging door-to-door sales of the calendar and the allocation of the revenue. The calendar was a way for the young royal children to express their support for youngsters of their own age who were in difficult circumstances. The Princesses’ Calendar proved to be a resounding success and by the time the princesses had grown up it was rechristened the Orange Calendar because the royal family are descendants of the House of Orange. From then onwards the calendar also included  photographs of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard, though the general emphasis was on the young royals.

If you thumb through the 45 calendars you can see the two generations of the royal family growing up through the eye of the camera: Queen Beatrix and her sisters from the late nineteen forties onwards and from the late nineteen sixties Willem Alexander and his brothers and cousins. The exhibition offers a good impression of those decades. While in the early nineteen fifties the princesses pose in immaculate white dresses on the Soestdijk palace lawn, in the late nineteen seventies Willem Alexander and his brothers are wearing shorts, sturdy Kicker boots and brightly coloured T shirts and are sitting on a big pile of rough hewn stone underneath a tree. These pictures illustrate the changing image that the royal family has conveyed to the general public over a period of 25 years. While the black and white photographs from the nineteen fifties typically portray the princesses in a royal setting, many of the photographs from the nineteen seventies look a lot like snapshots from our own family albums of the time.

Diverse original calendars will be on display in THE PRO JUVENTUTE CALENDARS exhibition along with many reproductions of photographs from the calendars. The emphasis is on the thirty years between 1948 and 1979, when the calendar had its heyday.

http://www.paleishetloo.nl/newsitem/168/2/3/The_Pro_Juventute_Calendars.html

Our Friend Hugo Vickers Comments on "The King's Speech"

My view is that a film is a film, and you have to move the drama on. People can say, for example, that Churchill didn't play nearly as big a role as he does in the film – he wasn't actually there at such and such a point, he never uttered those words, and so on. But the average viewer knows who Churchill is; he doesn't know who Lord Halifax and Lord Hoare are. I don't mind these things at all.

Of course, when the king made his famous speech after Chamberlain had declared war on Germany, none of those high-ranking officials who appear with him in the film were present. But they need to speak to the king, there's a point that needs to be made.

It's the essence of the story that counts, and the essence of the story here is very sound indeed.

Continue reading by clicking the link below...

Colin Firth as Bertie, Helena Bonham-Carter as Elizabeth in The King's Speech

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/09/how-historically-accurate-is-the-kings-speech

A New Royal Style Icon in the Making

It wasn't exactly a dress rehearsal, but Kate Middleton demonstrated her dark taste in wedding fashions when she stepped out Jan. 8 to attend friends' nuptials with Prince William and some of her future in-laws.

The princess-to-be grabbed headlines in the United Kingdom for wearing (gasp!) a nontraditional black velvet Libélula jacket and fluid above-the-knee black dress with sheer neckline to attend the late-afternoon Yorkshire ceremony of royal buddies Harry Aubrey-Fletcher and (Louise) Sarah Stourton.

Prince William was reportedly an usher for longtime friend Aubrey-Fletcher. The ceremony was also attended by Middleton's future brother-in-law, Prince Harry, and a royal-blue-clad Princess Beatrice, daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah, Duchess of York.


For more, click on the link

©Fame Pictures

http://www.stylelist.com/2011/01/10/kate-middleton-wears-black-to-a-wedding-and-is-she-too-thin/

Video of King don Juan Carlos and Other Members of Spanish Royal Family

A traditional military ceremony is hosted by the Spanish royal family every January. This is video from this year's Pascua Militar celebrated at Madrid's Royal Palace. Along with His Majesty King Juan Carlos are Queen doña Sofía and the Princess of Asturias.

http://www.hola.com/videos/ver/realeza/video/2011/01/07/2405

Oops...Even Kings forget to Turn Off the Mobile!

About to start an official function at the palace, King don Juan Carlos of Spain's mobile phone, which he had left inside a cabinet, began sounding with a rather funny and peculiar ringtone!

His Majesty apologizes and says , "excuse me...it's that I have a phone, perhaps, a little...excuse me!"

One reporter says, "Well, I guess it does happen to all of us!"

http://www.hola.com/videos/ver/realeza/video/2011/01/10/2409

The King and Queen of Jordan Pose with their Children

To commemorate the New Year, the King and Queen of Jordan posed with their four children for a photo image sending good wishes for 2011 to their people.