Victoria

Queen Victoria’s Consort was a man of exceptional intelligence; among his many interests, writes Winslow Ames, was the collection of early German and Italian paintings and the encouragement of contemporary artists.

Joanna Richardson describes how Queen Victoria wrote as she certainly must have talked - with common sense, some simplicity, much shrewdness, and occasional indiscretions.

Georgina Battiscombe introduces the Dean of Windsor; the wisest of Queen Victoria’s private counsellors and a relation of the Duke of Wellington.

During the two Victorian Jubilees, writes Joanna Richardson, Britain enjoyed an imperial grandeur which was displayed in the Queen’s celebrations.

Joanna Richardson describes how the prosaic alliance arranged between the middle-aged Duke of Clarence and Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen became at length an extremely happy marriage.

Joanna Richardson describes how, from the age of nine in 1828, Queen Victoria corresponded with her Uncle, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, King of the Belgians.

Terence O’Brien recounts how some women served with their husbands in the Crimean War as cooks, laundresses and nurses to the Regiment.

Joanna Richardson explains how, in Brazil, Damascus and Trieste Isabel Burton accompanied her husband on many of his travels and was his devoted business manager.

During troubled times over Hawaii, Oregon and the West Indies, Melville maintained a sympathetic attitude to Britain - not least to the Chartists, writes Charlotte Lindgren.

Christopher Hibbert describes how, against the Queen’s wishes, the Prince successfully toured the British Indian Empire at the age of thirty-four.