Victoria: A Life

I have read multiple biographies of Queen Victoria and biographies of Prince Albert and of their numerous children and grandchildren. When A.N. Wilson’s “Victoria: A Life” became available I was reluctant to read it because I did not think there was more to learn about the Queen. However, I was totally wrong in my assumption and I found that this sprawling biography made for fascinating reading. It is true that very few substantial new facts emerge in this book. No new documents about the Queen have become available.Indeed, the Queen’s children including Bertie, the Prince of Wales and Princess Beatrice ensured that everything written by the Queen was either destroyed or highly censored as in the case of Beatrice’s so-called transcription of the Queen’s journals. The novelty here is that Mr. Wilson provides a psychological analysis of the Queen that I found to be most convincing. He depicts a person very different from that portrayed in other biographies. The only other extant psychological biography of a monarch which is of equal quality in my opinion is Stefan Zweig’s “Marie Antoinette” which although published in 1933 has stood the test of time.As Mr. Wilson points out Queen Victoria is a complete paradox. After reading this sprawling biography, I find it difficult to understand why the Queen was so venerated during her reign and why she continues to be venerated by so many up to the present time. Mr. Wilson tries to be fair to his subject. However, he paints a portrait that is mostly unflattering. It is clear that the Queen was a highly selfish woman. She had nine children only one of whom, Vicky, the Empress Frederick of Germany, was in any way distinguished. It is clear though that the Queen had no real fondness for her children. Even though Bertie, later Edward VII was a dissolute reprobate, he did not merit the nasty treatment that he received from his mother. Her hemophiliac son Leopold was treated by her as nothing more than a servant while Princess Beatrice became a sort of lady’s maid or royal servant.After Prince Albert’s death the Queen sought friendship, solace and even love in sources outside of her immediate family. It is clear that Mr. Wilson believes that the Queen slept with John Brown her uneducated, rough-around-the-edges, alcoholic Scottish servant who mistreated the Queen’s children and even insulted British prime ministers. Mr. Wilson also provides evidence that the Queen likely married John Brown in a secret ceremony at Balmoral Castle. It might seem prudish to disapprove of this sort of relationship, but it was highly atypical for a royal personage in those days and particularly for one like Victoria who attacked her son Bertie endlessly for his multiple extramarital affairs.The Queen apparently even consulted Brown about affairs of state such as the fate of Bulgaria. Mr. Wilson’s description of a scurrilous pamphlet published in New York, entitled “John Brown’s Legs, or Leaves from a Journal in the Lowlands” by Kenward Philip is absolutely hilarious. It presents itself as written by the Queen and bears the dedicatory inscription, “To the memory of those extraordinary Legs!” Queen Victoria we learn also wished to be buried wearing a gold wedding ring given her by Brown. Such was the sensitivity of this issue that even Princess Margaret apparently tried to suppress mention of this fact in a book written by the Queen’s doctor’s granddaughter-in-law published as recently as 1987! After Brown’s death the Queen took up with an Indian servant, Abdul Karim, the Munshi. Mr. Wilson does not think it likely that she slept with him. However, her devotion to this dishonest, uneducated, conniving man is remarkable. She spent countless hours in his company and was not even deterred when Sir James Reid, her personal physician, provided information that the Munshi suffered from recurring attacks of venereal disease, especially gonorrhea!Another unappealing quality manifested by the Queen was her habit of cadging money for herself and her large family from successive British prime ministers. We find that she constantly claimed to be impoverished despite a large personal income from the Duchy of Lancaster. She squirreled away her allocation from the Civil List. She saw no distinction between her personal wealth and taxpayer money and was thus able to accumulate a sizeable fortune. The Queen’s gluttony extended to food. She did not hesitate to criticize relatives who had become obese. However, she herself was a compulsive eater and was grossly overweight.Another unappealing characteristic of the Queen was her extreme idleness. However, she did not hesitate to criticize Bertie and other family members for this quality. Even allowing for her extended period of mourning after the death of Prince Albert, it is clear that the Queen refused to perform the duties which even in those days were expected of royal personages. She would not preside at the annual State Opening of Parliament and refused to attend investitures and open bridges and railways. In other words, the Queen did not earn her large income from the Civil List. She spent most of her time at Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight, and at Balmoral in Scotland. She was therefore very rarely seen by her subjects unlike Queen Elizabeth II who has been a highly visible monarch.Mr. Wilson does point out that the Queen took a very active interest in both foreign and domestic affairs. Her relationships with successive British Prime Ministers are described in detail. I found her antagonistic relationship with Gladstone to be particularly interesting. It is amazing that a constitutional monarch like Queen Victoria could berate and harass her Prime Ministers about affairs of state and get away with it so completely. Mr. Wilson also provides brief descriptions of major historical events during the Queen’s long reign. I found these descriptions of long-forgotten wars and events to be particularly interesting and informative. Indeed, Mr. Wilson’s description of the Boer War and the factors leading to it is remarkably comprehensive.Royal biographies generally in my experience contain errors relating to the relationships of members of the vast European extended Royal family. Mr. Wilson’s biography is no exception in this regard although the errors are few. The most egregious error is contained on page 517. Here Mr. Wilson refers to “Ducky,” Princess Victoria Melita, the daughter of Affie, the Duke of Edinburgh as the “sister” of “Alicky” (later the ill-fated Empress Alexandra of Russia) and of “Ella” (Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia). However, Alicky and Ella were daughters of Princess Alice and Grand Duke Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt, while Ducky was the daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh and Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna. Ducky was therefore a first cousin to Alicky and Ella and both became her sisters-in-law when Ducky married their brother Grand Duke Ernst of Hesse-Darmstadt.Towards the end of the book Mr. Wilson raises the question as to how a monarch with such an irascible, selfish and difficult personality as Queen Victoria had come to be so loved by her subjects. He does not have an answer for us other than to ascribe the adoring relationship between Victoria and her people to “some weird paradoxical royal magic.” Clearly, Queen Victoria was a much more interesting person than many earlier biographers have portrayed. She was a very assertive personality and apparently possessed a fine sense of humor. She was apparently too a person of great kindliness and had a much greater intelligence than many have hitherto suspected. The paradox of Queen Victoria is that she was not a good monarch in the sense we would understand today, but yet somehow she attracted the deepest devotion from her subjects and remains a fascinating character to this very day when other more conventional royal women such as Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary are nowadays rarely written or thought about.I think this book might be difficult for readers who approach the book with little knowledge of Queen Victoria and of her extended family and of the important events in world history that occurred during her long reign. Mr. Wilson jumps around a lot and often refers to people by their titles in one place and by their first names in others. However, for anyone with an interest in the Queen this book is a treasure trove of information and I highly recommend it.

I’ve long been a fan of Victorian fiction—Dickens, Hardy, and the like. If I’m being honest, however, I knew very little about Victoria herself. I decided to read this book to remedy that shortcoming. Filled with information, it certainly fit the bill.I don’t know what impact a book like this would have on a Brit or someone more familiar with the monarchy but, as an American, I found the insight in the world of the queen at least as interesting as the particulars of her life. As a long-serving transitional figure between the absolute monarchy and the constitutional monarchy, Victoria’s general disinterest in being a public figure while expecting public monetary support and public respect in a world where monarchies were tumbling was often a challenge. Her relationships with her many Prime Ministers—some friendly and some less so—and how she influenced domestic and foreign policy were quite amazing.And, of course, her private relationships are of endless fascination. Her isolation as a child bordered on abuse while her ascension to the throne as a teen could have been a disaster but she managed to find her way. Her marriage with Albert, while as political as any aristocratic marriage, appears to have grown into a real love match. Certainly, they had no problem producing children and she appears to have fallen into a real depression at his early death. Her relationships with her children are also interesting, in that she seems to have treated them more as subjects than as her offspring. There certainly seemed to be a lot of criticism and “playing favorites” that one often finds with strong matriarchs, which often leads to problems. It’s an important area, however, considering how many of her offspring came to dominate European politics for a time.Wilson deals with Victoria’s relationship with John Brown with a decided lack of prurience, which is great. He notes her strong attachments and opinions and the embarrassments they caused the family (to the point where much of Victoria’s diaries were destroyed by her children). He also discusses a relationship with Munshi Karim, an Indian favorite who replaced John Brown in many ways after his death. I had never heard of this person before and learning of him gave a lot of insight into Victoria’s loneliness.In the end, it is hard to do justice to such a long life and reign, even in a book of this length. Some many names go by, so many people are born and die, it’s hard to keep track of it all if you’re not already familiar with the era. Still, even getting a glimpse into the world of Victoria and the woman herself is a pleasure worth having.

Not as engagingly written as the TV series from which it was adapted. Full of facts, though, and a lot of German expressions, as that was the primary language which was spoken at Court at the that the time of Victroia's accession to the Throne. Albert's primary language and the language they spoke when writing love letters, the German expressions do get in the way of the flow of the narrative. This biography does draw the characters clearly, if one understands the plethora of German expressions used here. But that is true to history; these were the descendants of James I, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, who fled to Germany after Elizabeth I ascended to the Throne. Having had no children, Elizabeth left the throne to her nephew James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, her older sister, daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. The family tree of children of Victoria and Albert shows a remarkable amount of serious inbreeding, first cousins marrying first cousins seemed to be the rule. Very detailed...a bit too much German for the lay reader. This is a scholarly researched tome, rather than an more accessible book for the average English-speaking reader.

Modern monarchy here in Britain owes its survival to a most capricious and largely unconstitutional Queen utterly unlike Queen Elizabeth who similarly has saved the monarchy. A.N. Lewis brings the Empress Queen and her empire vividly back to life in a way both fascinating and yet scholarly. He brings fairly modern research to many of the conundrums of Victoria's life with respect but not the deference that more sugary biographies of the past have done. Although probably a Conservative Mr Wilson gives no quarter when questioning the behaviour of Lord Kitchener and others who committed atrocities for which the Queen rewarded them. Similarly he recognises the achievements of the Empire but also recognises its failures.This is a superb piece of work and I look forward to more of this notably his Prince Albert more recently published.

A very informative account of Victoria and the age in which she lived, well written and consistently gripping. Other reviews have commented on the relative lack of material about Victoria herself in comparison with the acreage devoted to the historical background, and while there is truth in this, the context needs to be provided to understand her stance on the various issues. Over the whole work a picture of Victoria does build up, and not an attractive one - eccentric, greedy, averse to reform (even including resistance to the abolition of flogging in the army), but such may well have been the case. A. N. Wilson seems to make a conscious effort to redress the balance with references to her charm and kindliness - possibly somewhat forced, as one senses an instinctive dislike on his part. It might have been helpful to have a more continuous feed of reminders as to who's who, particularly as regards Victoria's prolific progeny, where explanatory phrases rather ran out as the biography progressed. Overall, though, hugely interesting about Victoria, her times, and her bizarre love life.

A N Wilson is a good author and has researched Victoria and her times very thoroughly.This is a serious work although the TV drama series was based on it and stripped of the costume, the backgrounds, the computerised presentation and the glamour, this book gives a realistic view of Victorian times.

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