Queen Victoria at home

the long version

"Alexandrina Victoria may have been an exemplary constitutional monarch in politics and international affairs, but she was equally interested and active in her domestic life, both as a wife and mother and as a ruler over her household. This combination of decorum and dignity with a genuine love of home and family life provides the ultimate key to her character. Michael de-la-Noy, biographer of the Queen Mother and of George IV, has fashioned a revealing and thorough portrait of this other side to her reign, from her youth spent in preparation for succession to her final years as matriarch of a family that extended into all the royal houses of Europe. De-la-Noy's impressionistic, intimate biography focuses on her personal life, her relations with her family and household, and her various residences. Queen Victoria at Home goes behind her civic role of a conscientious and hardworking sovereign to reveal a most devoted wife and the mother of nine children, who treasured domestic privacy over public adulation."--BOOK JACKET. "Balmoral Castle was the home Queen Victoria loved best. When there, she and Prince Albert would go on incognito expeditions to stay in isolated inns, and the Queen would call on the local crofters, distributing money and clothes. But she had numerous other houses, either inherited or which she built, and Michael De-la-Noy takes us on a conducted tour. Apart from Balmoral, there was Kensington Palace, where she was born; Buckingham Palace, where she was the first monarch to take up residence; Windsor Castle, the origins of which stretch back to William the Conqueror; the exotic Royal Pavilion in Brighton; and Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, where she died." "The Queen's essential isolation and her human need for sympathy at moments of crisis are illustrated by many touching examples drawn from the letters and reminiscences of those who knew her, and from her own journals. No sovereign has been better documented, yet few have been so misunderstood.^ What emerges from this intimate domestic portrayal is, alongside her self-centredness and obsession with the anniversaries of deaths, a great deal of humour, shrewdness and compassion. She could roar with laughter, bestow the most charming smiles and wink at risque jokes. She drove the male members of her household to distraction by insisting on conducting business with them by correspondence, yet retained the love and loyalty of all who served her. She showed generosity and affection to her servants, not merely turning a blind eye to drunkenness below stairs but also showing real concern when they were ill." "Victoria's long life span was such that as a child she was told by George IV to give him her paw and she lived long enough to see the telephone installed at Windsor Castle.^ The longest reigning British monarch so far, when she came to the throne in 1837 she imagined she could appoint any prime minister she liked; by the time of her death in 1901 most political patronage had passed into the hands of the Government. But Victoria was not only a working sovereign; she was the mother of nine children and a wife who longed, at times, for a simple family life. It is her personal story that De-la-Noy examines in this book."--BOOK JACKET.