Lytton Strachey on Queen Victoria: Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey

Holmes’s Lives: a new series of classic English biographies, edited and introduced by Richard Holmes. In this pioneering new series, Richard Holmes, the world’s leading Romantic biographer, sets out to recover the great forgotten tradition of English biography writing, and reaffirms the enduring excitement of classic non-fiction. ‘I have had no time for dusty tomes’, writes Holmes, ‘I have looked for brevity, intelligence and style. Above all, I have sought out great biographical writers: Biographers with passion, biographers who have found a way to the heart and soul of a memorable subject.’

Lytton Strachey sets out to paint a satiric portrait of Queen Victoria as an eccentric personality - stubborn, opinionated, highly emotional, imperious. But finally it becomes a deeply affectionate study of Victoria as an authentic heroine in a man’s world. It was said that Strachey was unexpectedly conquered by Victoria - or actually became her. He depicts her with growing subtlety, largely through her changing relationships with the powerful masculine figures with which she had to deal: her overbearing father, the adored ‘Lord M’, the dashing Prince Albert, and her various prime ministers, from Palmerston to Gladstone and Disraeli.