Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121863 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Heir to the throne at the age of 11, queen at 18, mothering her own heirs at 21, and both a widow and a grandmother by the time she was 42, Queen Victoria's was an extraordinary life, even for a British monarch. Centuries collided in her life and times. She was a quaint survival of a medieval age--preserving the dynasty by marrying off her children and observing court ritual to the letter. But she was a thoroughly modern monarch too--she loved rail travel at high speed, had an unusually insouciant attitude towards religion, and despite her reputation for not being amused, she was, at least until Prince Albert's death, a woman to whom gaiety and mischief came naturally. Christopher Hibbert, the biographer and popular historian, has already produced a selection from Victoria's journals and letters. Now he has written a full biography, which is a light and enjoyable tour through a familiar landscape. But with 66 chapters in 500 pages there is not much space for depth. The world beyond Victoria's court and family life does not feature very much. And on the outstanding questions of her reign--for example, her relationship with John Brown, her unrealistic sense of her own constitutional position, or the remaking of the image of the monarchy which took place after 1870--the author's verdict is either missing or inconclusive. --Miles Taylor

Synopsis
Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 and died in 1901 at the age of nearly eighty-two. For more than 60 years she presided over 20 governments, and a country undergoing profound economic, social and political change. In "Queen Victoria: A Personal History" we see Victoria develop from the young, inexperienced Queen in thrall to the charming, cynical and devoted Melbourne, to the intimidating matriarch who so terrified members of her household that they were once seen scurrying away across the lawn at Sandringham, crying "The Queen! The Queen!" when she appeared unexpectedly at the garden door. Victoria and her ministers are brought vividly to life, as are all those whom the Queen came to know, to love, dislike, revere or denigrate, from her mother's friend Sir John Conroy to her own adored husband, Prince Albert, who patiently endured her petulant tantrums. This biography is based on a wide variety of sources, including the Queen's voluminous correspondence and intimate journals.

Customer Reviews

Victoria, warts and all
After reading some glittering medieval and Tudor biographies, I wanted to fill in the gaps closer to our own day. Christopher Hibbert's comprehensive, readable biography is a good starting-point. However, as detractors have pointed out, it is short on political analysis. The emphasis is on "royal".

Hibbert sets the stage for Victoria's accession with a marvellous summary of how her various royal forebears failed to provide an heir, so that she succeeded by default. He delineates Queen Victoria's complex relationships with several Prime Ministers: her neediness with Lord Melbourne and Disraeli, antipathy towards Palmerston and Gladstone, respect for Salisbury. Unfortunately he does not clearly enough differentiate between Whigs and Tories. But he does acquaint the reader with the major political personalities and put you in a position to explore further. A useful reference alongside this book is "The Prime Ministers from Walpole to Macmillan" (possibly only available in the UK, and in danger of going out of print).

Skilfully interweaving Victoria's personal history with national and international landmark events, Hibbert provides handy, if underwritten, overviews of the Indian Mutiny, the Crimean War, the Great Exhibition, and Chartism. He also sketches contemporary European royals like Napoleon III, exploring tensions between France, Italy and Austria.

Co-dependency, egotism and self-pity characterised Victoria's personal contacts. Her henpecking of her intelligent, unpopular consort Albert, and later selfish blocking of her children's marriages in order to keep them around, echo her own repressive childhood. But Victoria's households at Balmoral and Osborne were beacons of domesticity, and she was well-travelled and sophisticated.

She hated pregnancy, resented her children, and was scathingly dismissive of the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII). After Prince Albert's untimely death, she avoided official engagements for years, to the consternation of her government and people. She fostered obsessional bonds with her Scottish and Indian servants.

Her prolific writings reveal a needy, infantile and self-obsessed woman. Her USE of CAPITALS in an age before the telephone, is a way of SHOUTING (not unlike the internet), and italics give her prose stridency.

So what were Queen Victoria's merits, if any? By dint of longevity she was the epoxy glue of the Age which took her name, and her progeny peopled the Royal houses of Europe. Surviving several assasination attempts, Victoria held her family and household in thrall, and the country in awe. Somehow she inspired the loyalty, if also exasperation, of her Governments.

Henry VIII or Elizabeth I she ain't, but the story is worth reading. Christopher Hibbert gives an urbane, accessible account, with mercifully short chapters.

Victoria, warts and all
After reading some glittering medieval and Tudor biographies, I wanted to fill in the gaps closer to our own day. Christopher Hibbert's comprehensive, readable biography is a good starting-point.

He sets the stage for Victoria's accession with a marvellous summary of how her various royal forebears failed to provide an heir, so that she succeeded by default.

Hibbert delineates Queen Victoria's complex relationships with several Prime Ministers: her neediness with Lord Melbourne and Disraeli, antipathy towards Palmerston and Gladstone, respect for Salisbury. Unfortunately he does not clearly enough differentiate between Whigs and Tories. But he does acquaint the reader with the major political personalities and put you in a position to explore further. A useful reference alongside this book is "The Prime Ministers from Walpole to Macmillan" (possibly only available in the UK, and in danger of going out of print).

Hibbert skilfully interweaves Victoria's personal history with national and international landmark events. He provides excellent overviews of the Indian Mutiny, the Crimean War, the Great Exhibition, and Chartism. He also sketches contemporary European royals like Napoleon III, exploring tensions between France, Italy and Austria.

Co-dependency, egotism and self-pity charactertised Victoria's personal contacts. Her henpecking of her intelligent, unpopular consort Albert, and later selfish blocking of her children's marriages in order to keep them around, echo her repressive childhood. But Victoria's households at Balmoral and Osborne were beacons of domesticity, and she was well-travelled and sophisticated.

Her own writings reveal an infantile and self-obsessed woman. Her USE of CAPITALS in an age before the telephone, is a way of SHOUTING (not unlike the internet), and italics give her prose stridency. Victoria utterly failed to take into account other people's feelings, viewing Prince Albert and John Brown through the prism of her own needs. She was scathingly dismissive of the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII). After Prince Albert's death, she whiningly avoided official engagements for years. She fostered obsessional bonds with her Scottish and Indian servants.

So what were Queen Victoria's merits, if any? By dint of longevity she was the epoxy glue of the Age which took her name, and her progeny peopled the Royal houses of Europe. Surviving several assasination attempts, Victoria held her family and household in thrall, and the country in awe. Somehow she inspired the loyalty, if also exasperation, of her Governments.

Henry VIII or Elizabeth I she ain't, but the story is worth reading. Christopher Hibbert gives an urbane, accessible account, with mercifully short chapters.

Hibbert notches up another admirable achievement
Christopher Hibbert, now aged 77, has 34 books to his credit. This staggering total presumably includes one or two lemons, but this reviewer has yet to find any. Hibbert's latest volume belongs with his very best, and defies anyone to read a single chapter without immediately gobbling up the next half-dozen.

It might be thought that Queen Victoria's two finest pre-Hibbert biographers, Elizabeth Longford and Stanley Weintraub, had between them exhausted their theme. Hibbert, though, draws on Royal Archives material which no previous book-length study has used. While the result compels no spectacular revisions of accepted verdicts, it periodically shines instructive new beams of light.

How did Victoria survive? Partly through luck: she died just before Hearst- or Pulitzer-style gutter-journalism had emerged with the aim of routing all political authority save its own. Partly through the sheer strength of monarchism's position throughout Europe in the half-century before World War I: a period when only Switzerland, Portugal (after 1910), Spain (1873-75) and Third Republic France (itself crypto-monarchist) formally eschewed kingship. But partly through that most elusive of personal attributes: a charm that could, when she chose, thaw the frostiest critics. It thawed them posthumously as well: above all in the case of Lytton Strachey, who began his account of her life with every intention of dancing the Charleston on her grave, but whose reflexive sniggers she eventually silenced. It has clearly won over Hibbert too.