History isn’t just about bodice-ripping, you know

Kate Williams, author of a book on the young Victoria, welcomes the new film on the early life of the queen, but says historical cinema should portray politics as well as romance 

‘Utterly gorgeous’, declares the advertising for the new film The Young Victoria. Queen Victoria ruled a quarter of the world’s souls, and saw the world change immeasurably during her 64-year reign. As a biographer of Victoria’s young life, I relished the film’s investigation of the power struggles of her marriage with Albert and her battle for self-determination. But the review quoted might refer to a dress, not a film about the life of our longest-reigning monarch.

We are obsessed with the minutiae of modern politics, speculating endlessly on who said what at Granita, and relishing the replay of the fall of the Iron Lady in Margaret on BBC2. And yet when it comes to history, producers tend to emphasise romance, seemingly concerned that audiences have little interest in the political struggles and in-fighting of the past.

In 2008, The Other Boleyn Girl was indeed gorgeous. But Henry VIII’s dilemmas seemed to be reduced to a decision between blonde (Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn) and brunette (Natalie Portman as Anne). Thomas Cromwell was relevant only to the extent that he administered Henry’s love life; the religious schisms that rocked the country and consequences of the severing of relations with Europe were forgotten. Eric Bana as a virile Henry was part of an eternal triangle, an erotic threesome with two pretty sisters, and kingship seemed to be a case of presiding over glittering parties. ‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart’, Lord Byron might have claimed, but this is not so in the historical film.