Jane Ridley

Queen Victoria with the naughty bits put back

A review of Yvonne M. Ward's Censoring Queen Victoria: How Two Gentlemen Edited a Queen and Created an Icon. The gay old Etonians who made sure that Victoria's letters didn't tell the messy truth

Queen Victoria writes letters at a table piled with despatch boxes Photo: Getty 
issue 15 March 2014

  • Censoring Queen Victoria: How Two Gentlemen Edited a Queen and Created an Icon

    Yvonne M. Ward

    One World, pp. 208

Queen Victoria was the inventor of official royal biography. It was she who commissioned the monumental five-volume life of Prince Albert, a controversial and revealing work. She wrote most of the personal sections herself. She also published bestselling volumes, such as Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands.

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