Our favorite resident royal historian, Charles Spencer (also known to many as Princess Diana's younger brother), is back again with more historical images to educate viewers on his family's background and lineage. After perusing his grandfather Jack Spencer's scrapbook dated back to 1909, Charles stumbled upon a newspaper clipping that Jack had cut out featuring his father (Charles's great-grandfather) welcoming the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia to Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Yesterday, the royal shared his findings in an Instagram post.
Princess Diana's Brother Shares Vintage Newspaper Clipping of Their Great Grandfather
Down the rabbit hole
Published Sep 14, 2024
•12:00pm
David Livingston / Contributor/Getty Images
For context, this means that Princess Diana and Charles Spencer's great-grandfather was acquainted with the famed Romanov couple, who at the time were the rulers of Russia. Charles revealed in an Instagram post of the clipping that his great-great grandfather served as Lord Chamberlain to King Edward VII and sat next to the Tsarina for two consecutive days on their trip to the Isle of Wight 115 years ago.
The clipping, dated Thursday, August 5th, 1909, shows a number of people including Charles's great-grandfather and the Tsar of Russia, a woman named Miss Knollys, the Princess of Wales, the Prince of Wales, Princess Victoria and the King all dressed up in the fashions of the time to get into their motor cars for a drive to Osborne. The caption on the clipping reads: "The King and Queen with their imperial Russian guests coming ashore yesterday at the [sic] on the River Medina for their visit to the Royal Naval College and Osborne [sic]." Spencer's grandfather conveniently added handwritten labels to the image to point out his father in the photo.
In the same post on Instagram, Spencer shared that his great-grandfather documented the encounters and conversations that he had with the Tsarina in his unpublished diaries. Charles wrote in the caption of his post that he would be revealing the contents of those conversations and encounters in a soon-to-be-released book called The Rabbit Hole Book: 99 Adventures into the History of Stuff.
David Buchan / Contributor/Getty Images
The stories told in the book, which is being published by Penguin Random House, take the reader on a journey documenting 99 new chapters of historical rabbit holes. The book is based on a podcast of the same name that Spencer hosts together with Reverend Richard Coles and Professor Cat Jarman.
Spencer's 33 chapters in the new book dive into little "rabbit holes" of information like the story of his great-grandfather's encounter with the Romanov couple and cover everything from the history of sunbathing, to early Christian missionary trips to Japan, concepts of beauty and more.
We're definitely looking forward to hearing more about the conversations exchanged with the Tsarina.
