The first comprehensively researched biography of Queen Victoria ever, by one of Britain's best biographers. This magnificent biography sheds new light on Victoria not just as a queen, but as a woman.
A. N. Wilson grew up in Staffordshire and was educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is a prolific and award-winning biographer and celebrated novelist. He lives in North London.
[A] splendid biography - this book is a gem: thoughtful, witty,
insightful, striking a balance between political commentary and
personal gossip... As this terrific biography shows, there really
was a human being behind the gloomy portraits.
*Evening Standard*
Subtle, thoughtful ... a shimmering and rather wonderful
biography
*Guardian*
Wilson is affectionately alert to the rich contradictions of his
subject's personality, and his deliciously readable biography
becomes increasingly fascinating as Victoria's reign unfolds.
*Daily Mail - Book of the Week*
This superb revisionist biography is the book that he was born to
write. Wilson clearly loves and admires his subject, but this is a
critical biography - funny, insightful, original and authoritative.
At last Victoria has been rescued from her widow's weeds.
*Spectator*
A. N. Wilson brings his novelist's perception and immense knowledge
of the era to his effervescent biography of the tiny woman (4ft
11in) who ruled Britain for 61 years... This won't be the last
biography of Victoria but it is certainly the most interesting and
original in a long time.
*Sunday Times*
Ninety-five years ago, the standard was set by Lytton Strachey's
lucid and moving Queen Victoria but A. N. Wilson has now raised the
bar... And what a pity she never met A. N. Wilson: she shines in
his company ... [this] expansive and victorious book.
*Daily Telegraph*
A. N. Wilson has written a sympathetic but by no means hagiographic
biography of her that will probably overturn many people's
prejudiced conception of her... Wilson's picture of her is a
rounded one, with her vices and virtues.
*The Times*
A biographer of Queen Victoria also needs to be a good historian,
with a confident grasp of the personalities and issues of
19th-century public life. Mr Wilson is at his best here... This is
a bracing biography of a bracing woman ... it undeniably achieves
its central aim to make us take Queen Victoria more seriously.
*Country Life*
Wilson is an excellent history teacher. He orders and narrates the
hugely complex socio-political events and party infighting of the
19th century with a rare clarity... His own achievement, sustained
by a lifetime's scholarly fascination with the Victorian era, is
also in its way, awesome.
*Financial Times*
Few if any previous biographers have viewed her as incisively and
absorbingly as Wilson does in his... smoothly flowing treatment of
the queen's long life. The considerable detail he brings to his
greatly balanced portrait not only strengthens his estimation of
the significance of the queen in British governmental history but
also successfully conveys for the general reader all the nuances of
character that Wilson so carefully shares.
*Booklist, starred review*
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