Queen Victoria: A Life of Contradictions

"A concise book [with] the confidence of considerable research, well digested and well delivered. . . . Perfect." — The Times (UK)

Queen Victoria is Britain's queen of contradictions. With her combination of deep sentimentality and bombast, cultural imperialism and imperial compassion, fear of intellectualism and excitement at technology, romanticism and prudishness, she became a spirit of the age to which she gave her name.
Victoria embraced photography, railway travel, and modern art; she resisted compulsory education for the working classes, recommended "a good whipping" for a leading women's rights campaigner, and detested smoking. She may or may not have been amused.
Meanwhile, she reinvented the monarchy and wrestled with personal reinvention. She lived in the shadow of her mother and then under the tutelage of her husband before finally embracing self-reliance during her long widowhood. Fresh, witty and accessible, Queen Victoria is a compelling assessment of Victoria's mercurial character and impact, written with the irony, flourish, and insight that this queen and her rule so richly deserve.

"Dennison constructs a remarkable portrait of the queen." — Publishers Weekly

"Only a very talented biographer could get to the key of Queen Victoria's complicated and psychologically fascinating personalist and character. Fortunately, in Matthew Dennison she has found one." —Andrew Roberts, author of The Storm of War