Description
The precise tale for lovers of the PBS Masterpiece collection Victoria, this web page-turning biography unearths the actual lady in the back of the parable: a daring, glamorous, unbreakable queen—a Victoria for our Instances. Drawing on in the past unpublished papers, this surprising new portrait is a tale of affection and heartbreak, of devotion and grief, of energy and resilience.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
THE NEW YORK TIMES • ESQUIRE • THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY
“Victoria the Queen, Julia Baird’s exquisitely wrought and meticulously researched biography, brushes the dusty fable off this ordinary monarch.”—The New York Instances Ebook Evaluate (Editor’s Selection)
Whilst Victoria was once born, in 1819, the arena was once an excessively other position. Revolution might threaten a lot of Europe’s monarchies within the coming many years. In Britain, a technology of royals had indulged their whims on the public’s cost, and republican sentiment was once rising. The Business Revolution was once reworking the panorama, and the British Empire was once commanding ever better tracts of the globe. In a global the place ladies have been incessantly powerless, right through a century roiling with modification, Victoria went directly to rule essentially the most tough us of a on the planet with a decisive hand.
5th in line to the throne on the time of her start, Victoria was once an bizarre lady thrust into an ordinary function. As a lady, she defied her mom’s meddling and an adviser’s bullying, forging an iron will of her personal. As a teenage queen, she eagerly grasped the crown and relished the liberty it introduced her. At twenty, she fell passionately in love with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, ultimately giving start to 9 kids. She beloved intercourse and extremely joyful in energy. She was once outspoken along with her ministers, overstepping standard barriers and announcing her evaluations. After the dying of her loved Albert, she started a arguable, intimate courting along with her servant John Brown. She survived 8 assassination makes an attempt over the process her lifetime. And as technological know-how, generation, and democracy have been dramatically reshaping the arena, Victoria was once a logo of steadfastness and safety—queen of 1 / 4 of the arena’s inhabitants on the peak of the British Empire’s succeed in.
Drawing on assets that come with recent revelations approximately Victoria’s courting with John Brown, Julia Baird brings vividly to lifestyles the attention-grabbing tale of a lady who struggled with such a lot of of the issues we do nowadays: balancing paintings and circle of relatives, elevating kids, navigating marital strife, shedding oldsters, preventing anxiousness and self-doubt, discovering an identification, in search of which means.
