Queen Victoria (Essential Biographies)

Queen Victoria is the longest-reigning monarch in British history. In this concise biography, Lady Longford, long recognised as an authority on the subject, gives a full account of Queen Victoria's life and provides her unique assessment of the monarch. David Cannandine hailed her Victoria RI as 'pre-eminent in the genre...the commissed biography that the great Queen never got'. Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 on the death of her uncle William IV. In 1840, she married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and for the next twenty years they were inseperable. Their descendants were to succeed to most of the thrones of Europe. When Albert died in 1861, Victoria's overwhelming grief meant that she virtually withdrew from public life. This perceived dereliction of her duty, coupled with rumours about her relationship with her Scottish ghillie John Brown, led to increasing criticism. Coaxed back into the public eye by Disraeli, she resumed her former enthusiasm for political and constitutional matters with vigour until her death in 1901.