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Victoria: A Life (2014)

by A.N. Wilson(Favorite Author)

3.81 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

159420599X (ISBN13: 9781594205996)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Penguin Press HC, The

review 1: Victoria, A Life has 624 pages and a shipping weight of 2.2 lbs and may not be for the casual reader who may find the book dry, dense and tedious with the plethora of characters and their connections and actions that impact and are impacted by a multilayered and complicated European history and the zeitgeist of Victoria's time.For others this book will be a treasure.There is so much here, in this behemoth of a book that I will list only a few of the things I found interesting that have nothing to do with this book's massive and necessary political history.Author A.N. Wilson writes, "Loving Victoria--which many people were to do--was learning to live with a furious irascibility of temper."Much of what we know about Victoria's thoughts and feelings is revealed through her ma... moreny letters.She writes about the `bliss beyond belief' of her wedding night.We learn how she treats her mother, her husband and her children; about her mental torments; how she felt about her pregnancies; the post natal depression she suffered, and we learn the surprising revelations about her playfulness which made her seem at times like two different people.She blames her son Bertie for Albert's death. She thinks Bertie is dull. "...never neglecting the opportunity to denigrate him or to find fault."She bickers with her husband and neglects her mother, choosing to believe her mother had been cold and unfeeling when actually, according to the author, her mother had been a constant supportive presence in her life.This may be the definitive book on Queen Victoria and her time. It is a major achievement.But it is not for everyone.I was one one of those mildly curious readers and found the book overwhelming.
review 2: A Comprehensive View of Queen Victoria's LifeQueen Victoria was a complex woman. One of the strengths of Wilson's biography is that through the use of her letters and journals he is able to show us the internal life of the Queen. Victoria was married, presumably happily, to Prince Albert. They produced nine children, and his death left her prostrate. Albert was a strict Victorian husband treating Victoria often as a child and using severe methods to raise the children. Although Victoria loved Albert, her love for her children was less pronounced. Her relationship with her heir, Bertie, was particularly fraught with unpleasantness. After Albert, she engaged in two relationships that could be described as scandalous. She spent many years with John Brown, Highland John, and may have been married to him, but if so the record or such an alliance has been destroyed. Her later relationship with Munshi, her Indian Secretary, paints the picture of a lonely old woman taken in by a successful conman. However, seeing Victoria in these three relationships makes her more of a real person. The author is adept at bringing the political situation into the biography. He shows how Victoria both shaped events and was shaped by them. For me, this was the best part of the book. I did learn some interesting things about Victoria's childhood. She believed that she had a lonely childhood, but using her journals, the author shows that she grew up with the stepbrother and stepsister, the children of her mother's first marriage. This is a long book and the writing is often scholarly to the point of dryness. However, if you're interested in Queen Victoria or the Victorian Age, it's well worth reading. I reviewed this book for the Amazon Vine Program. less

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