The glamour and the opulence of the Edwardian era is to be explored in a major new Buckingham Palace exhibition, featuring a Faberge cigarette case given to King Edward VII by his favourite mistress – an ancestor of Queen Camilla.
The Edwardians: Age of Elegance will delve into the family lives, personal collections, global travels and glittering social circles of two of British history’s most fashionable royal couples – Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, and King George V and Queen Mary.
It will bring together more than 300 items including jewellery, fashion, paintings and books – the majority never seen before – by famous figures such as Cartier, Oscar Wilde, Sir Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.
Among 20 Faberge pieces will be a famed blue enamel Art Nouveau cigarette case featuring a diamond-encrusted snake biting its own tail, which Edward VII received from his mistress Alice Keppel in 1908, with the unbroken serpent a symbol of her eternal love.
Alice Keppel is Camilla’s great-grandmother, and legend has it when a young Camilla first met the then-Prince of Wales, now her husband and the King, on a polo field in the seventies, she boldly brought up their relatives’ affair.
“My great-grandmother was your great-great grandfather’s mistress, so how about it?” she is said to have quipped.
After Edward died in 1910, Queen Alexandra, perhaps recognising the significance of the gift, returned the case to Mrs Keppel as a memento.
Edward had a series of long-term mistresses including the actress Lily Langtry.
Twenty-five years later, in 1936, Mrs Keppel gave the case to Queen Mary, ensuring that it would remain in royal ownership.
In 1863, Queen Victoria’s eldest son Albert Edward had married Princess Alexandra of Denmark, and the fashionable young couple – the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra – ushered in a glamorous new era for the royal family.
Queen Victoria was still mourning Prince Albert, but Edward and Alexandra established their own vibrant court, filled with contemporary art, opulent balls and society events – a lifestyle later continued by their son, the future King George V, and his wife Queen Mary.
George V and Princess Victoria Mary of Teck wed in 1893, and like Edward and Alexandra, they surrounded themselves with fashionable society figures known as the Marlborough House Set.
Curator Kathryn Jones said: “The Edwardian era is seen as a golden age of style and glamour, which indeed it was, but there is so much more to discover beneath the surface.
“This was a period of transition, with Britain poised on the brink of the modern age and Europe edging towards war.
“Our royal couples lived lavish, sociable, fast-paced lives, embracing new trends and technologies.
“Yet in their collecting we also see a need to retain tradition and record the rapidly changing world around them, as if to preserve a fading way of life.
“The outbreak of World War I shattered their world, marking the end of an age and forever changing the face of monarchy.”
Visitors to the exhibition in The King’s Gallery at the Palace from April will see dazzling jewellery up close including Alexandra’s Dagmar necklace, a wedding gift from the King of Denmark, and Mary’s Love Trophy’ Collar necklace, on show for the first time.
Displays will evoke the fashionably cluttered interiors of the royal couples’ private residences at Marlborough House and Sandringham House, where decorative objects and family photographs covered every surface.
A Cartier crystal pencil case set with diamonds and rubies will be exhibited for the first time, alongside a personally inscribed copy of Oscar Wilde’s Poems and an early edition of the first book printed by William Morris’s Kelmscott Press.
Both couples collected works by the great contemporary artists of the period, such as a previously unseen study of Sleeping Beauty by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and Charles Baugniet’s After the Ball, a Lady in a Ballgown Asleep on a Sofa.
Baugniet’s painting, on public view for the first time in more than a century, depicts the exuberance of the era, with a society beauty resting on a blue sofa, still dressed in her ballgown.
The royal family also embraced the new medium of photography, and the exhibition will include images by pioneering female photographers Mary Steen and Alice Hughes, as well as photographs taken by Alexandra, using portable Kodak cameras to capture official events and family moments.
Edward, Alexandra, George and Mary travelled further than any royals before them, collecting objects, receiving gifts, and employing tour artists and photographers, as well as capturing their own memories.
Visitors will see items from their travels to five continents, including an Egyptian scarab brooch given to Alexandra by Edward after his tour of the Middle East in 1863.
The Edwardians: Age of Elegance is at The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, from April 11 to November 23 2025.
