Jane Ridley

What was the secret of Queen Victoria’s rebel daughter?

Lucinda Hawskley thinks she knows. But her The Mystery of Princess Louise presents no hard evidence

Coloured photograph of Princess Louise dating from the early 1880s by the society photographer Alexander Bassano [Copyright: www.bridgemanart.com]

Princess Louise (1848–1939), Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter, was the prettiest and liveliest of the five princesses, and the only one who broke out of the royal bubble. Artistically talented, she trained as a sculptor, and her marble statue of Queen Victoria can still be seen in Kensington Gardens. Unlike her sisters, who all married royals, Louise became the wife of a commoner, Lord Lorne, later Duke of Argyll.

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