The Edwardians: Age of Elegance; Cartier review – excess all areas

King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace; V&A, London
British royal history in the era of Fabergé, photography, empire, war and tiny waists is an expertly spangled soap opera. And a blockbuster Cartier show of jewels, maharajas and movie stars rises above the gossip

The future Edward VII looks out from a white marble bust at the start of The Edwardians: Age of Elegance. His eyes have a familiar exophthalmic bulge beneath heavy Saxe-Coburg lids. The sculptor has turned the prince’s head a fraction, to give him a flatteringly distant air of authority, but is otherwise faithful to the facts: Edward’s love of upturned wing collars, of informal jackets and the wide tie knot he popularised, known to this day as the Windsor.

Edward (1841-1910) – Bertie, as he was familiarly known – was the eldest son of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. She is said to have blamed the boy, or at least his chronic philandering, for her husband’s premature death. Prince of Wales until the age of almost 60, waiting for Victoria to give up the throne, Edward was king for barely nine years until his own death. Only the present monarch has had to wait longer.