Queen Victoria Book

I’m not one of her most ardent admirers but as a conscientious Brit, aware of Her late lamented Majesty’s 200th birthday last month, it seemed appropriate to reach for Strachey’s volume which I had never managed to read. It is a little gem: highly readable and an excellent overview of the woman who was every inch (63 according to the Royal Archives) a Queen. She probably wouldn’t thank me for it, but whenever I think of a Queen, in all the many guises of Queenship, I think easily of Victoria. No one could flounce like her.

I loved Strachey’s gentle, witty style. (He knew a Queen when he saw one). It is sympathetic but never sycophantic: he paints the royal warts and all. A smothering childhood at the hands of a single, rather insecure parent, probably ill prepared her for the life ahead; her education was lacking, certainly. Queen at 18, bride at 20, mother at 21. Albert, her adored and gifted husband, in effect educated her during their 21 year marriage. The country owes him a great deal. He did much to put the ‘Great’ into GB and probably killed himself in the process. His widow would not, of course, allow us to forget.

There were other men in her life - on and off the national stage– here’s a flavour of Strachey: “after the long gloom of her bereavement, after the chill of the Gladstonian discipline, she expanded to the rays of Disraeli’s devotion like a flower in the sun.” “The strain of charlatanism, which had unconsciously captivated her in Napoleon III, exercised the same enchanting effect in the case of Disraeli”. He referred to her as “The Faery”, quoting Spenser of course. Lytton Strachey gives outrageous examples of this flattery and the heights of campness their relationship reached.

In old age she communicated tirelessly by letter with her vast family, “following with absorbed interest every detail in the lives of the ever-ramifying cousinhood.” to quote Strachey again.

Interestingly, she was left the bulk of the estate of John Neild, a Miser, who died in 1852. This amounted to £500,000 approx or around £65.5 million in today's money. So, a bit of a financial buffer for her I guess.

Recommended. 4*