Biographer Melanie Clegg tells Historia about the close relationship between Queen Victoria and Alix of Hesse, which included Victoria’s meddling in her granddaughter’s marriage plans. Two strong-willed women; who would win? As, like many other biographers, I am fundamentally nosy at heart and love nothing more than having a good old pry into other people’s […]
Empress Alexandra by Melanie Clegg
When Queen Victoria’s second daughter Princess Alice married the Prince Louis of Hesse and Rhine in 1862 even her own mother described the ceremony as “more of a funeral than a wedding”, thanks to the fact that it took place shortly after the death of Alice’s beloved father Prince Albert. Sadly, the young princess’ misfortunes […]
Queen Victoria: a dark, if splendid, monster?
To mark the bicentenary of Queen Victoria’s birth on 24 May, 1819, author and HWA member Miranda Carter examines Victoria’s lifelong conviction that she was always right – especially when she was completely wrong – and its often disastrous consequences.
Review: Victoria and Abdul
Victoria and Abdul (dir: Stephen Frears) is the latest example of an established genre of films which has developed the trick of holding up a mirror to the British as a people, seeing a certain amount of ugliness but then managing to come up smelling of roses. The ugliness we see is usually something along […]
Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking
Our guest this month, historian Deborah Cadbury, on the royal dynasty that ruled Europe. While researching extensively in the royal archives at Windsor Castle for my latest book, Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking, I was struck by the resonance between late-nineteenth-century Europe and today’s world. Reading accounts of the inflammatory rhetoric of the German Kaiser, the incidents of […]
Victoria: ITV’s New Flagship Drama
It is every teenager’s dream. At the age of 18 you break free of the Muggles who have been controlling your life since childhood and at the same time you are granted a miraculous power, which means that everybody has to do what you say. Even Harry Potter didn’t manage the last part but in […]