Queen Victoria's Letters: A Monarch Unveiled

Queen Victoria was one of the nineteenth century's most prolific diarists, sometimes writing up to 2500 words a day. From state affairs to family gossip, she poured out her emotions onto paper. Those close to her were afraid her more alarming opinions might escape in written form, causing havoc. In fact much of her writing was destroyed after her death and her personal journals 'edited' by her daughter. But what survives frequently reveals a woman quite different to the one we think we know. Now A.N. Wilson reads her personal journals and unpublished letters and discovers the factors that shaped the Queen's personality. From the tortured relationship with her mother, to the dominant men she clung to in search of a father figure and the powerful struggle that made her marriage to Prince Albert a battleground, Queen Victoria was always a woman in search of intimate relationships. As a daughter, a wife, a mother and the Queen of a growing Empire, as friends and family came and went, her pen remained her constant companion and friend. (Viasat)