My latest article: Prince Carl and the Nobel Peace Prize

This year’s last issue of Royalty Digest Quarterly (no 4-2010) has arrived and among its content is my article “Prince of Peace – Prince Carl of Sweden and the Nobel Prize”. Based on research I did in the archives of the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo last winter I am able to say that Prince Carl of Sweden, who served as President of the Swedish Red Cross from 1903 till 1945, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize no less than seventeen times between 1924 and 1937. On three occasions – 1924, 1928 and 1936 – he was shortlisted, meaning that he was among the handful of candidates whose credentials were closely scrutinised.
In the end Prince Carl never received the Nobel Peace Prize, but in my article I chart the history of his recurring candidature, which enjoyed strong support from many notable personages – among them three Swedish prime minister, a long list of parliamentarians, the Nobel family and Fridtjof Nansen, the polar explorer who had himself earlier been awarded the Peace Prize.
Prince Carl was not the only royal to be nominated for this most prestigious of awards, but he is the only one who is known to have been seriously considered. In my article I also identify the reason why his father, King Oscar II, himself often hailed as “the Prince of Peace”, did not receive the Peace Prize.

In the same magazine I have reviewed the German historian Jörg-Peter Findeisen’s biography of King Carl XIV Johan of Sweden and Norway, and in The Court Historian (Volume 15, 2), the international journal of court studies published by the Society for Court Studies, I have a review article of the exhibition “The Palace and Linstow: The Cornerstone of the New Capital”, which was held at the National Museum – Architecture in Oslo between May and October this year, and its accompanying catalogue.

These three will be my last articles published this year, bringing the total number for 2010 to thirty – counting nine longer historical or art historical studies, eleven newspaper articles or op-eds, seven reviews, two letters to the editor and one obituary.