Alfred: Queen Victoria's Second Son

We rarely hear about the second son of Queen Victoria. He was in love with E gland and the navy, but assigned as a toddler to sacrifice it all for his father's family.

So excited to have found a book that had more then a chapter on Prince Alfred. For years I didn't think I would find a credible book. John Van der Kristen wrote a thoughtful and thorough book and I found the reading easy and informative. This is not just a history but an enjoyable book of family, friendship and sorrow. I give it 5 stars.

Alfred: Queen Victoria's Second Son is a useful addition to the vast canon of books on Victoria and her extended family. References to Alfred are usually limited to a very predictable number of stories of his childhood relationship to Bertie, his brother, and their experiences aboard ship in the Royal Navy when they were very young. After that, he becomes barely a dot on the radar screen. I was fascinated to read about his enormous popularity throughout the Empire, the number of royal engagements he took on, and his complex personality. He could be beneficent and engaging. He could be a drunken bully. But the book has its share of problems. The author seems unable to make up his mind about Alfred. Again and again he will change his mind in mid-sentence about Alfred's performance as a royal person or about this basic goodness as a human being. There is disappointingly little about his wife, Marie, and her prickly relationship to the English royals. She arrived in England as a Russian Imperial Highness and spent a lifetime resenting being demoted to an HRH. The book ends so abruptly that one wonders if van der Kiste lost interest or just ran out of things to say. I didn't spot any factual errors, however the proofreading must have been done only by a computer's spell checker. An astonishing number of typos litter the page - but they are all "real" words, although the wrong words. Surely a human being should have been assigned the responsibility to go through with a red pencil. "Alfred: Queen Victoria's Second Son" is an excellent complement to having a complete collection on the topic.

This is a fascinating book, an absolutely terrific read. Alfred comes across as the nineteenth century Prince Harry - good looking, dedicated to his military service, and married to an outsider. John Van her Kiste does a wonderful job at helping the reader keep all of Queen Victoria's children and grandchildren clear (so many duplicate names!!) and tweaking out the different personalities.HOWEVER - IT'S OBVIOUS THAT NO ONE PROOF READ THIS BOOK. At times the mistakes are painful, and several on each page... not just there/ their/ they're mistakes, though they're present, but abundant other errors throughout. Read with a grain of patience for the mistakes that spellcheck doesn't check. It's really great read, but yeah, needs a proper editor.

I loved this book. It really identified the difficulties that Prince Leopold had to deal with in his all too short life. Unfortunately, the book that I read has absolutely nothing to do with the picture of Prince Alfred and HIS biography, which Amazon chose to showcase in the margin. Apparently, they may no longer be doing business with the seller of the book about Leopold which I read and Amazon took it upon themselves to sustitute a book about a sibling of his. Shame on Amazon!

I always enjoy reading about Queen Victoria and her descents! But reading about Alfred Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was a sad life, especially towards the end ofT his life. The only times he enjoyed it is when, he was in the navy and doing his favourite sports! The only time he was recognized by anyone was at his funeral! To bad he didn't live to see it navy and his favourite sports. The only time he actually was recognized by anyone, was at his funeral! To bad he wasn't alive to see and enjoy it!

My daughter and I are fans of John Van Der Kiste and have purchased all his books. This is a much more current, expanded and updated version of his 1984 book "Dearest Affie," which was also available on Kindle until this book was published. This work provides almost 100 more pages and has included new material that has come to light since the initial work was published. It is definitely worth repurchasing this version if you are at all interested in Queen Victoria's son, who reigned as Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and was the Duke of Edinburgh before Prince Philip.

I love history and this book was very interesting. It's nice to read about the second son of Queen Victoria. If you like history you will like this book.

Having read the original, I was so pleased John Van der Kiste added so much in this second edition. It is a thoroughly good read and I was sorry when I got to the end of it. As he said, so much information has now been released that he has been able to update his first effort. Alfred seemed to be happiest at sea where he was in a position of importance rising from cadet to Admiral of the Fleet, however, he was a very intelligent and conscientious sailor and one feels would have done just as well if he hadn't had such an auspicious parent such was his dedication to the Service. The Navy was the love of his life, not so his wife Marie who was a Russian Duchess and felt marrying Alfred was quite a comedown - she also hated England. Alfred became quite a bad tempered man, probably his heavy drinking didn't do much for his character. Eventually he had to leave the Navy and take up his inheritance as the Duke of Coburg and live in Germany with his family, he seemed to escape as much as he could from his wife, the marriage had soured and she certainly seemed to prefer life when he was out of the way.

There is an interesting mix of family gossip and context on a wider european political stage. However there was also too much uninteresting detail such as the precise changes to Naval uniform that Alfred suggested. The fact that he was involved enough to suggest changes was sufficient; I didn't need to know the number of buttons etc.. Occasional errors such as positioning Haslar creek in Portsmouth rather than Gosport were irritating, as were the constant spelling and odd grammatical errors that could easily have been avoided by more careful translation or editing/proof reading (eg. 'apparently found like in a Service town' instead of 'life'). But overall I did end up with an interesting if patchy overview of Victoria's son and an understanding of the machinations and connections of her wider family.

This is a very readable and concise account of the life of Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria's second son. I found this book a fascinating read - learning so much about this very well traveled yet (in these days) somewhat unknown royal. There are the tragic circumstances of his son's suicide (mirroring the Mayerling tragedy) and Alfred's interesting relationships with his Romanov in-laws. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to find out more about Queen Victoria's extended family - not just the usual books about Prince Albert and Edward VII etc. Well worth a read.

Excellent reading learnt a lot about her second son. Their relationship with each other after his father died. The author has done a brilliant job

It was a very interesting biography plenty of obscure facts and not to much political jargon. I loved it because he is the least known son of Victoria and there are only scant references in all the other books that I have read ( and they are many) so it was super to have a whole volume about him. Sadly there were many spelling mistakes in the print .