Victoria

By: Stanley Weintraub

Narrated by: Donada Peters

This biography of Victoria highlights the many dramas of her life. For example, she was fatherless at eight months and treated poorly by her family, but survived to become the only English queen comparable to Elizabeth I. The character of Victoria herself, stubborn and vital, is also drawn out.

not the best victoria

I think I can truthfully say that I have read every available book about Queen Victoria and every single one of her family members. The forward to this book promises that this is going to be the real definitive story of her life. my take on the book is that it is in fact far from fulfilling this promise

I have to say that to me it seemed like many nuances of well know incidences in the story were flattened down. for example the banishment of Victoria's long time governess Lietzen and the battle over the nursery were not mentioned in much detail. On the other hand there were details about Leitzen's attempts for example to control the funds from the duchy of Cornwall which i had not seen mentioned before so although it's it's true that there was an extreme close up on many details of certain events, the psychological aspects are missing which is what I would expect in a "personal" approach to her life.

In fact if this book had not been presented as a truly personal look at Victoria's life, I wouldn't be making this criticism necessarily, I would just think it was sort of a second rate book that had some parts that were of interest but I resent being led by the nose into thinking I'm going to get to read some in depth or at least interesting thinking about her and then finding a recitation of facts and events lacking much analysis.

Also I really don't need any more discussion of the politics of the era and I don't read historical biographies particularly about the Royal family for that aspect so in a way I felt slightly bamboozled by the description of this book

the narration was excellent