2019 is the two hundred year anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria. Victoria the Widowed Queen is the last of three books about ‘The Colourful Personal Life of Queen Victoria’. Prince Albert died in middle age and Victoria spent twice as long as his widow than as his wife. This book is about Victoria’s widowhood when she became the longest serving European sovereign and the matriarch of a huge clan. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout with portraits from the author’s collection and uses some of Victoria’s own words from her journal and letters to help tell the story.The first years of Victoria’s widowhood were the least successful of her reign. She refused to appear in public and her popularity suffered. She gradually emerged from self-imposed gloom but her seclusion in remote homes, far from London, fuelled scandalous rumours about her private life.The story of Victoria’s widowhood includes the men in her life. At only forty-two, the queen was a desirable catch but never considered another foray into the royal marriage market. She formed a close relationship with a male servant, flirted with her prime minister, and became very fond of a handsome son-in-law. Late in life she had a puzzling relationship with an Indian young man. By the end of her reign, Victoria was an institution and the icon of the age; the symbol of Britain’s superpower status and monarch of two hundred million subjects in an empire that stretched around the globe. She is the British monarch in history whose name everyone knows. ‘The Colourful Personal Life of Queen Victoria’ focusses on Victoria as a woman - her personal life, the events that formed her character, and the relationships that were important to her. Young Victoria covers her early years including the difficult childhood that formed her character and how she came to the throne aged only eighteen. Victoria & Albert looks at her marriage to Albert and how she balanced the very different roles of sovereign and Victorian wife and mother.
