In her bicentenary year interest in Queen Victoria is greater than ever: but she was almost entirely uneducated and understood neither her people nor the constitution, and her greatest achievement was to live for so long
The British have made the 19th century synonymous with Queen Victoria to the point where some appear to think she was an architect of their country’s achievements, reforms and expansions in that remarkable era. One detected this in some of the gushing pre-publicity that accompanied the bicentenary of her birth, on 24 May.
There have, perhaps, been too many saccharine and inadequate television …read more
Source: New Statesman
