Art, Passion & Power: The Story Of The Royal Collection

Modern Times. In the final episode of his history of the Royal Collection, Andrew Graham-Dixon explores how royal collecting has changed since the days of Queen Victoria.

This is a story of the British royal family’s remarkable survival, while elsewhere monarchies crumbled in the face of world wars and revolutions. But it is also an age when women - both queens and consorts - firmly made their mark on the Collection.

It’s one of the curiosities of the Royal Collection that as the monarchy’s power diminished and changed, so too did the objects they collected. Gone were epic canvases, instead came objects of exquisite, delicate and intimate beauty. Andrew marvels at a selection of the royal family’s collection of Fabergé works of art - one of the greatest in the world - that includes the Mosaic Egg from 1914. And then there’s Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House: an astonishing artistic collaboration by over 1,500 people and companies, replete with tiny champagne bottles filled with real champagne.

Andrew also brings royal collecting up to date, exploring the impact of the Windsor Castle fire in 1992, and meeting HRH The Prince of Wales to discuss his recent portrait commissions of veterans of the Second World War, and the continued importance of this remarkable collection.

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