{"id":305,"date":"2016-09-02T12:37:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T12:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/02\/book-review-victoria-life-by-n-wilson_2\/"},"modified":"2020-10-28T02:34:36","modified_gmt":"2020-10-28T02:34:36","slug":"book-review-victoria-life-by-n-wilson_2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/02\/book-review-victoria-life-by-n-wilson_2\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review–Victoria: A Life by A .N. Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

“We are not amused.”<\/p>\n

That, probably apocryphal, quote from Queen Victoria is pretty much all I remember about her. \u00a0Well, that and the fact that she authorized the building of a huge monument to her beloved husband and that she had an entire time period in history named after her.<\/p>\n

That is not a huge amount of information when we are talking about a woman who reigned over a world power for 63 years, 7 months, and 2 days.<\/p>\n

Then I watched The Young Victoria<\/i>, a movie which I found intensely irritating. \u00a0It was full of yearning glances, gorgeous clothes, and little substance. \u00a0It was so focused on the love story between Victoria and Albert that it glossed over almost everything else and in the process left me with more questions than I had started with. \u00a0I wanted to know what she was really like, how involved she was with the politics of the day, what went on in her life after her husband died and how a woman who was so in love with her husband went on to be associated with a prudish and straight-laced time period.<\/p>\n

There is a book for that. \u00a0There is always a book for that. \u00a0And there you have my life’s motto. \u00a0The book is Victoria:\u00a0 A Life<\/i>\u00a0by A. N. Wilson. \u00a0It is a huge (600 pages) and detailed account of Queen Victoria’s life and reign. \u00a0It quotes extensively from her letters and was obviously thoroughly researched.<\/p>\n

The book covers such a huge time period and such an outsize character that it is hard to know where to start when talking about it. \u00a0The list of things I had never known before I read this book is equal parts fascinating and horrifying. \u00a0I thought I was reasonably well-educated but, for example, \u00a0I had no idea that her descendants fill or have filled so many royal positions around the world. \u00a0She was very astute in marrying her children off.<\/p>\n

Victoria sounds like a difficult woman who needed to be handled carefully. \u00a0Here is a quote from a letter Prince Albert wrote to her.<\/p>\n

You have again lost your self-control quite unnecessarily, I did not say a word which could wound you, and I did not begin the conversation, but you have followed me about and continued it from room to room. \u00a0There is no need for me to promise to trust you, for it was not a question of trust, but of your fidgety nature, which makes you insist on entering, with feverish eagerness, into details about orders and wishes which, in the case of a Queen, are commands, to whomsoever they may be given.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the same time, she is described as a woman of great charm and friendliness. \u00a0She basically seems to have been a mass of contradictions. \u00a0Prince Albert was a very intelligent man who, it is generally agreed, was not properly valued by the people during his lifetime.<\/p>\n

The prince wanted to buy a permanent site for educational, scientific, and cultural institutions, the land now occupied by the Royal Albert Hall, Imperial College, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Royal College of Music \u00a0and the Royal College of Art: the so-called Albertropolis. \u00a0It is not a bad legacy for a foreign prince of whom the British majority were so suspicious when he first arrived on their shores, nor for the Exhibition which he championed, and which pessimists had predicted would be a failure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Victoria went through a time during her middle life, after Prince Albert’s death, when she retired from public life, behaved somewhat erratically and her ministers, according to Wilson, occasionally feared for her reason. \u00a0It is during this time period that her servant, John Brown, became such a fixture in her life. \u00a0Her children deeply resented him and he did not show people the respect they thought they deserved. \u00a0There is much debate about their exact relationship but Wilson feels there is no way to know for sure what went on between the Queen and Brown. \u00a0Many letters were destroyed after her death, some of them being described as incriminating. She was a woman of sudden and intense relationships. \u00a0Brown was not the only one of her servants with whom she developed a close and generally disapproved of friendship.<\/p>\n

Victoria reigned over a decisive time period in Britain’s and the world’s history. \u00a0I was amazed when I read about the different Prime Ministers who served during her rule. \u00a0There were so many famous names, Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone. \u00a0Victoria saw the expansion of the British Empire and the industrial revolution. \u00a0The book does a good job of weaving together Victoria’s personal life with the politics, social history, and world events of her day.<\/p>\n

It is impossible to sum up the life of such a complex woman in just a few paragraphs. \u00a0Read the book. \u00a0It is fascinating and makes the history of the time period and the woman who reigned over it fascinating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“We are not amused.” That, probably apocryphal, quote from Queen Victoria is pretty much all I remember about her. \u00a0Well, that and the fact that she authorized the building of a huge monument to her beloved husband and that she had an entire time period in history named after her. That is not a huge amount of information when we are talking about a woman who reigned over a world power for 63 years, 7 months, and 2 days. Then I watched The Young Victoria, a movie which I found intensely irritating. \u00a0It was full of yearning glances, gorgeous clothes, and little substance. \u00a0It was so focused on the love story between Victoria and Albert that it glossed over almost everything else and in the process left me with more questions than I had started with. \u00a0I wanted to know what she was really like, how involved she was with the politics of the day, what went on in her life after her husband died and how a woman who was so in love with her husband went on to be associated with a prudish and straight-laced time period. There is a book for that. \u00a0There is always a book for that. \u00a0And there you have my life’s motto. \u00a0The book is Victoria:\u00a0 A Life\u00a0by A. N. Wilson. \u00a0It is a huge (600 pages) and detailed account of Queen Victoria’s life and reign. \u00a0It quotes extensively from her letters and was obviously thoroughly researched. The book covers such a huge time period and such an outsize character that it is hard to know where to start when talking about it. \u00a0The list of things I had never known before I read this book is equal parts fascinating and horrifying. \u00a0I thought I was reasonably well-educated but, for example, \u00a0I had no idea that her descendants fill or have filled so many royal positions around the world. \u00a0She was very astute in marrying her children off. Victoria sounds like a difficult woman who needed to be handled carefully. \u00a0Here is a quote from a letter Prince Albert wrote to her. You have again lost your self-control quite unnecessarily, I did not say a word which could wound you, and I did not begin the conversation, but you have followed me about and continued it from room to room. \u00a0There is no need for me to promise to trust you, for it was not a question of trust, but of your fidgety nature, which makes you insist on entering, with feverish eagerness, into details about orders and wishes which, in the case of a Queen, are commands, to whomsoever they may be given. At the same time, she is described as a woman of great charm and friendliness. \u00a0She basically seems to have been a mass of contradictions. \u00a0Prince Albert was a very intelligent man who, it is generally agreed, was not properly valued by the people during his lifetime. The prince wanted to buy a permanent site for educational, scientific, and cultural institutions, the land now occupied by the Royal Albert Hall, Imperial College, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Royal College of Music \u00a0and the Royal College of Art: the so-called Albertropolis. \u00a0It is not a bad legacy for a foreign prince of whom the British majority were so suspicious when he first arrived on their shores, nor for the Exhibition which he championed, and which pessimists had predicted would be a failure. Victoria went through a time during her middle life, after Prince Albert’s death, when she retired from public life, behaved somewhat erratically and her ministers, according to Wilson, occasionally feared for her reason. \u00a0It is during this time period that her servant, John Brown, became such a fixture in her life. \u00a0Her children deeply resented him and he did not show people the respect they thought they deserved. \u00a0There is much debate about their exact relationship but Wilson feels there is no way to know for sure what went on between the Queen and Brown. \u00a0Many letters were destroyed after her death, some of them being described as incriminating. She was a woman of sudden and intense relationships. \u00a0Brown was not the only one of her servants with whom she developed a close and generally disapproved of friendship. Victoria reigned over a decisive time period in Britain’s and the world’s history. \u00a0I was amazed when I read about the different Prime Ministers who served during her rule. \u00a0There were so many famous names, Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone. \u00a0Victoria saw the expansion of the British Empire and the industrial revolution. \u00a0The book does a good job of weaving together Victoria’s personal life with the politics, social history, and world events of her day. It is impossible to sum up the life of such a complex woman in just a few paragraphs. \u00a0Read the book. \u00a0It is fascinating and makes the history of the time period and the woman who reigned over it fascinating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2802,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions\/2802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}