When Queen Victoria died in 1901, she had ruled for nearly sixty-four years. She was mother of nine and grandmother of forty-two, and the matriarch of Royal Europe, through the inter-marriage of her children. Her destiny was thus interwoven with millions of peoples - in Europe, and the ever-expanding British Empire. Her face adorned postage-stamps, banners, statues and busts all over the known world. This was the era when Britain rose, for a few decades, to be supremely the most powerful nation on earth, and Victoria is the embodiment of this golden age.0Victoria was also a prolific, almost compulsive diarist and correspondent. At her death she left 122 volumes of journals, which her daughter Princess Beatrice transcribed, burning the originals. Her son Edward VII recovered and destroyed her letters, even paying a blackmailer, and this material - and speculation over what was concealed - have added to the myth and mystique surrounding Britain's longest reigning monarch.0A. N. Wilson's far reaching, exhaustively researched and definitive biography explores the curious set of circumstances that led to Victoria's coronation, her strange and isolated childhood, her passionate marriage, Prince Albert's pivotal influence, her widowhood and intimate friendship with John Brown. He sets this against the backdrop of this most momentous political and historical epoch in Britain - and Europe's history.
