Victoria

As convicts celebrated Queen Victoria’s birthday on remote Norfolk Island, debates raged over the purpose of punishment and the merits of Alexander Maconochie’s project of moral reform.

On 28 August 1839, the earl of Eglinton hosted a ‘medieval’ tournament to mark Queen Victoria’s coronation. It was a damp squib.

Recent royal crises reveal echoes of discontent in 1870s Britain, when disquiet with monarchy manifested in calls for its abolition. 

The young queen married Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on 10 February 1840.

Joanna Richardson describes how Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, Vicky, married an amiable future German Emperor.

Queen Victoria’s Consort was a man of exceptional intelligence; among his many interests, writes Winslow Ames, was the collection of early German and Italian paintings and the encouragement of contemporary artists.

Joanna Richardson describes how Queen Victoria wrote as she certainly must have talked - with common sense, some simplicity, much shrewdness, and occasional indiscretions.

Georgina Battiscombe introduces the Dean of Windsor; the wisest of Queen Victoria’s private counsellors and a relation of the Duke of Wellington.

During the two Victorian Jubilees, writes Joanna Richardson, Britain enjoyed an imperial grandeur which was displayed in the Queen’s celebrations.