Queen Victoria

She was known as "the first lady of the American theater." Emphasis on the word "lady."Helen Hayes, who died yesterday at age 92 of heart failure in a hospital near her home in Nyack, N.Y., epitomized grace, charm and a quality that eludes many lesser souls in her profession -- unpretentiousness.Referring to her lofty title in an interview two years ago, Miss Hayes was quoted as saying, "It's a role I never wrote, nor did I practice it in front of a mirror. I'm too lazy to pretend offstage."

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," declare Shakespeare's sleepless Henry IV. What he fears is rebellion, overthrow and death. That monarch's real descendants have more commonplace concerns: taxes, fire, unpopularity, domestic discord and a prurient press.The separation of the Prince of Wales and Princess Diana has no constitutional significance. That was the point of the Palace announcement read in both houses of Parliament. Charles is still heir to the British throne. His son, William, is next in line.

Many a young military man has begun his career with a tour of duty abroad.But for Bert Anderson, posted to the British Isles in the '60s, it was also the beginning of his second career.Mr. Anderson, then a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, was sent to Edzell, Scotland, a small, east coast town between Dundee and Aberdeen. When he returned to Maryland three years later, he had, besides a career plan, a burgeoning collection of British royal family memorabilia. The cream of this collection is being shown through Nov. 25 in the first floor showroom of his Frederick antiques shop, Antique Imports.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.It was a time of sun-bathed croquet lawns and gentle breezes that carried the music of a glass harp. It was a time for Queen Victoria to sit under a white garden trellis and accept the curtsies of girls in long dresses.But, alas, it was not Kensington Gardens but Quiet Waters Park inAnnapolis. And assembled there were children of the '90s -- the 1990s. The students of Arundel Junior High School in Odenton strained against the steamy restrictions of their formal clothing and balked at the waltz.

With the United States and its allies settled in for a long fight in the Middle Eastern desert, now's a good time to take a look at some other, long-ago duels in the region.In September of 1898 a victorious group of British soldiers raised a flag above the capital city of Khartoum, deep in the Sudan region of Africa. The band played a solemn air, the hymn "Abide with Me," and the Union Jack rose to the top of a flagstaff.It was a memorial to the best-known foe of Arab forces in modern history, Gen. Charles George Gordon, the British governor general of the Sudan.