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Victoria

A Life

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Victoria

By: A. N. Wilson
Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
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About this listen

To many Queen Victoria was a ruler shrouded in myth and mystique, portrayed as an aging, stiff widow. But in truth Britain’s longest-reigning monarch was passionate, expressive, humorous, and unconventional.

A. N. Wilson’s exhaustively researched and definitive biography includes a wealth of new material from previously unseen sources, showing us Queen Victoria as she’s never been seen before. Wilson explores the circumstances that led to Victoria’s coronation, her isolated childhood, her passionate marriage to Prince Albert, and her widowhood, all set against the backdrop of this momentous epoch in world history.

©2015 A.N. Wilson (P)2015 Oakhill Publishing Great Britain Politicians Royalty Women Witty Imperialism Winston Churchill King

Critic Reviews

"[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." (Dominic Sandbrook, Evening Standard)
"Subtle, thoughtful...a shimmering and rather wonderful biography." (Kathryn Hughes, 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." (Jane Shilling, Daily Mail Book of the Week)
"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." (John Sutherland, Financial Times)
"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." (Theodore Dalrymple, The Times)

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The “best” biography of Victoria?

That’s what one of my friends called it. It’s the only one I have read, but I enjoyed it immensely and it was very well read. My only complaint, and it is a complaint to be laid at the feet of both the author and the reader, is that their familiarity with French is much greater than their familiarity with German. The author regularly quotes his subjects in French without any translation, but laboriously translates the most simple German phrases. He says in his introduction that he learnt German just for this project, and it seems he wanted to display the fruits of this effort. The reader on the other hand, who’s French seems superb, reads the German sentences as if they were shopping lists with horrific pronunciation that makes it hard for even someone who does know German to understand him.

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