Customer Reviews

Queen Victoria A Personal History

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It is quite true that Queen Victoria said, "We are not amused." She said this at one of her dinners, when a courtier had told a story that had made his end of the table laugh. She insisted that he repeat it, and he did so unwisely, for it was a risqué story, and it produced her unforgettable reprimand.

But one of the lessons of _Queen Victoria: A Personal History_ (Basic Books) by Christopher Hibbert is that the Queen did have a sense of humor, even during her long widowhood. One of his chapters, indeed, is mostly devoted to the things that made her laugh. Letters of a maid-of-honor say, "the queen laughed very much," or "she was immensely amused and roared with laughter, her whole face changing and lighting up in a wonderful way," or "she was very funny at the evening concert... in excellent spirits and full of jokes." The comedian J. L. Toole was renowned for his imitation of the Queen, and was horrified after dinner when she insisted on seeing it. After the performance, she sat "for a while silent and serious, but then began to laugh, gently at first, and then more and more heartily." It is hard to believe that this risible monarch could have been doing anything but continuing the joke when she thereupon told him, "Mr Toole that was very clever, and very, very funny, and you must promise me you will never, never do it again."

The compartmentalization into chapters is one of the attractive parts of this new biography. Hibbert himself lists "several excellent biographies" of the Queen, and it is clear that her larger-than-life persona will never exhaust the biographer's art. This book is of fair size (500 pages) but it is divided into 66 chapters, each one sticking, more or less, to its point. The chronology of the Queen's life sometimes suffers thereby, but each chapter has its light to give.

Hibbert has had access to some letters and other papers not previously used in biographies, but there is not a great deal new to learn about this extraordinary woman. However, the organization of the book makes its episodes memorable and compelling. There are anecdotes on almost every page that bring the Queen into focus; especially good are descriptions of her traveling habits, her relations with her Prime Ministers, the dullness of her court life, and the difficulties with her children. She was a woman of many talents and weaknesses, and put herself forward in an amazingly intricate court and political system. This is a readable, full, and insightful biography.

Christopher Hibbert has the marvelous ability to make historical subjects come alive. He succeeds again in this biography of Queen Victoria,

This book is titled a Personal History, and that's really the focus. He turns the venerable monarch into a human being, with hopes, fears, heartaches, heartbreaks, a sense of humor, mood swings, petulance and even (gasp!) desires.

Victoria's image (at least to Americans) is of the stuffy old monarch, unsmiling, and always dressed in black. Hibbert portrays quite a different picture - of a young woman who loved parties, dancing, and the affection of men. He also makes clear Victoria's physical passion for her husband, Albert. This is evident in the passage where, after giving birth to eight children, she is advised by her doctor not to have anymore. Her response was "You mean I can't have any more fun in bed?" Not what we expect from a Victorian!

The portrait of a post-Albert Victoria is of a woman devasted by the death of her lover. Clearly the modern picture of Victoria comes from this stage of her life. However, this image is based on incorrect assumptions. Where we assume the stolid, frumpy queen arises from her belief in Victorian morals, in this book the picture is of a woman who lost her most precious soulmate, and whose last 40 years were a struggle against loneliness and depression, while bearing the heavy responsibility of being the most powerful monarch in the world.

The book also vividly portrays the numerous characters in this remarkable woman's life, including Lord Liverpool, the Duke of Wellington, Disraeli, and Kaiser Wilhelm.

Recommended to anyone with an interest in English history.

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.

Author Hibbert has done a fine job of relating the life story of Queen Victoria. The woman who lent her name to an age characterized by prudery comes across surprisingly open minded. Her views on childbirth and religion certainly don't seem to fit in with the times. She gladly accepts drugs to help with the pain of childbirth and encourages others to do so also. While a religious woman, she didn't seem particularly anxious to press her views on others. Her relationship with her children is detailed and her concern that her grandchildren make happy marriages, rather than dynastic marriages is touching. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on her relationship with John Brown, the Scotsman who served her faithfully after the death of her beloved Albert. Like most woman, she seemed to enjoy the company of a man.

The only small complaint I have with the book is the order. The chapters focus on various parts of her life, rather than chronologically. I prefer a chronological order because then you can view various actions in their total context. It helps to know what else was going on in her life during her struggles with her eldest son for example. However, I would recommend the book to anyone with more than a passing interest in the subject. Queen Victoria has found an admirable biographer and she comes to life as a dynamic woman.

Christopher Hibbert's fascinating biography of Queen Victoria is aptly subtitled "A Personal History". This book focuses on Victoria's personal relationship with her family, her ministers and her staff. Given her extraordinary long life, there is a lot of material to cover. I was particularly interested in Victoria's contentious early relationship with her mother and the way the young queen was so successful in establishing her independence from the forces that hoped to use her as a tool for their personal ambitions. Equally fascinating was her relationship with Albert, the Prince Consort. Victoria's long widowhood and deification of her husband's memory is well-known. Her infamous grief has overshadowed Albert's real accomplishments and contributions to her reign. Hibbert also paints an in-depth portrait of Victoria's difficult relationships with her many children. After reading the book I impressed both with the queen's obvious charm and intelligence and equally appalled by her selfishness. In many ways Victoria's contradictory character shaped the world for nearly a decade. Hibbert has done an excellent job of portraying all facets of Victoria's life and written an entertaining and highly readable book.

Queen Victoria was a complex character and Hibbert shows her in all her faults and good qualities, very fairly. A very nice balance between the private and the public Victoria, very well-written. If you are new to reading bios of Queen Victoria, I would read this first, then the older biography written by Elizabeth Longford (1965). Skip the Weintraub version; it stinks.

I had to title my review with a paraphrase of Bismarck's well known statement on Queen Victoria because it is so apt for this new biography. Most people probably have a mental picture of Queen Victoria as a cold, remote statue frowning down at them. Frigid and bigoted are two words that come to mind when her name is mentioned. Now Christopher Hibbert has done a fine job of stripping away the stereotype and showing us the true Alexandrina Victoria with all her emotions intact. This is indeed a personal biography, so you won't find a lot of information on the great political and social issues of her reign, but there are plenty of sources available for them if you want them. If you want to know the real person behind the nineteenth century's most powerful monarch, Hibbert is for you.

This book sits somewhere between an easy read for non-historians, and a heavy, detailed tome for scholars. Since Victoria was related to practically every royal that lived in Europe during the 19th Century, following all the connections to their ultimate ends would make for a many thousand page work. This book really does not leave the British Isles, which left me somewhat disappointed, since so much important history related to Victoria's reign occurred elsewhere. If the book gave me more detail, I would have given it 5 stars. For me it was a bit light. I can't get enough of the finer political details, which are covered somewhat superficially here. If you are looking for a PhD level work, this is not it - 12th grade Advanced Placement European History, this will do.

While adding nothing radically new to the story of Britain's Queen Victoria, this biography is still an engrossing read. Hibbert, a chronicler of several historical royals as well as military figures, has written an engaging book.

I especially liked the rare picture of QV smiling, as well as the compartmentalization into chapters of various aspects of her life (e.g., chapters highlight the Queen's Indian servants, the Queen's travels, the Queen's daughters, etc.) Also quotes at length from the correspondence from Victoria's beloved Prince Albert, which I had never before seen. My favorite vignette was Albert writing to her after a quarrel, where he complained that when he left the room hoping to finish the argument, QV followed him anyway and continued to harangue him.

Another nice element was the clear explanation of the various machinations and events that led to Victoria's assuming the throne (such as the Duke of Kent abandoning a mistress to marry Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg in order to father a legitimate heir). Also delves into a discussion of QV and her loyal servant (but probably not lover), John Brown.

All told, a smashing biography of Prince William's great-great-great-great-great-grandmama.

I thought that Christopher Hibbert's book provided a interesting and informative review of Queen Victoria's life and relationships with her children. However, I found myself skipping over the pages which were about Queen Victoria's relationships with her Prime Ministers. I thought that the book tended to drag towards the end having got off to a very good start. The relationship that Queen Victoria had with her mother and her adviser was chronicled with detail and had her opinions included, not just the writers.