Reviews for Queen Victoria:personal History

The average rating for Queen Victoria:personal History based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-10-16 00:00:00 Wilson Whitaker this is not a bad book but it could have used someone that made the facts and historical events more fun to read about since reading this book a lot like a history school book: as many facts, information and actual quotes crammed into the pages as possible without ever pausing to stop and make it actually readable or enjoyable to learn it all. don’t get me wrong, the author clearly did his work! this book is full of interesting facts and a lot of direct quotes taken from letters or other writings either from the queen or people in direct contact with her. so it really gives a view how her life was like. but the entire book fells like dried up ashes! there is no live it it at all. and while i don’t mind just getting facts and informations about history or people that lived it... it’s always nice to actually have an author that manages to make the past feel as if it’s actually something that was alive and happening instead if just droning on and on. if you love the victorian area and need to read everything about it and/or want to learn basically all the information about queen victoria: this is the book for you! if you need a bit more, not just a book that feels and more or less reads like a bulletpoint facts of everything that happens in queen victorias life: might want to skip this one or just skim this book and try something else. i would have loved to get a bit more of what kind of behavior this clearly disturbed queen showcased outside the official moments. maybe speculate a little bit based on facts? not to make it fiction but just taking a bit of an opinion on what kind of person this queen was. i would have loved to see that, but i didn’t get it. which is fine but also didn’t make it overly enjoyable to read this book, for me personally! as already said it’s not a bad book, it’s just not one of those historical nonfiction books that takes you into the history and makes the people it talks about seem alive!

Review # 2 was written on 2009-08-01 00:00:00 Jena Chaidez I got about half way through the book and only scanned the rest of it. That might have more to do with me than with the author. Basically this is an unusually readable book about a very unlikable woman. The 19th century was a rotten time to be a child. Victoria's childhood was pretty miserable, but her children's childhood was probably equally miserable. I found myself cheering for her when she stood up to her mother on the day she became Queen, but it was also obvious from the book that she had been working on that and thinking about it for months, and possibly years, before it happened. But as she got older, especially during the years of her widowhood, she became more and more abusive to her children and to the women who served her. Basically she was a bully who was certain that the world ought to revolve around just one person - herself. I don't know how the author felt about Queen Victoria, but I didn't want to spend any more time in her presence so the book is getting returned to the library.