Last Days of Glory: The Death of Queen Victoria

I like a book that is focused and keeps its tone throughout. With content like this I'm sure it took discipline to weed out the many stories of people and events that brought the world to this date. For instance, just enough is devoted to the Kaiser and John Brown is appropriately dealt with in the appendix. The tone stays the same through the final days, to the funeral preparations and then the funeral ritual itself. It had been so long since a monarch's death, that no one could remember the protocol. There were big issues and smaller decisions. How to inform the populace? How long should a mourning period last? (Various aspects of the economy had to be considered.) Would Edward hire the Queen's personal staff? Hymns had to be chosen, and a favorite had to yield to the politically correct one of the time. So many outpourings from at home and abroad. Special request floral designs. Visiting dignitaries. What to call the Princess of Wales before installation? QV left very detailed instructions, but soon to be installed King Edward now had the veto. Rennell gives us all the above and more. He sticks with his topic and brings together all the pertinent material. Very good job.

When I first saw that this book was published, I was skeptical that enough information could be gathered about Queen Victoria's death to make for interesting reading. Was I wrong! The Last Days of Glory: The Death of Queen Victoria by Tony Rennell contains not just lots of interesting information, but also all the high drama required of a good Victorian novel. The cast of characters is unbelievable. They include: 1. a robust queen whose rapidly failing health is kept from her public until the last minute 2. a reluctant heir who would rather go fox hunting and spend time with his mistresses than attend his mother's deathbed or assume the throne 3. a passel of children and grandchildren who hover about and argue with each other 4. an obnoxious, arrogant and overbearing grandson (Kaiser William II) trying to make nice with his British cousins (who all loathe him) while trying to muscle his way into the death scene 5. a personal doctor who is second guessed at every opportunity, is never allowed to physically examine the queen and who serves as a spy to the Kaiser 6. a bishop who tries to interject too much "churchiness" into the death scene and is finally asked to leave 7. a head dresser who has promised the queen to sneak a large number of objects and mementos into the queen's coffin (without her family's knowledge) including several from the queen's devoted Scottish servant, John Brown (also rumored to be her secret husband) 8. a large number of heads of state who scheme and plot and politic against each other at the funeral, even though most of them are related to each other 9. an Empire of British subjects who have never known another sovereign and 10. a large group of faithful but bumbling government officials who have no clue how to bury the old monarch or install the new one because they haven't had to worry about such things for over 63 years.Add to this story a lost effigy for the burial sarcophagus and over 100 daily newspapers scrapping for every little tidbit of information, and you have a saga most fiction writers could only dream about. To make the story even more interesting, we learn about the changes in the Empire and the world during the course of Victoria's reign. Telegrams have revolutionized communication, telephones are in their infancy, and no one really believes that the new horseless carraiges will become popular because they're too expensive. Queen Victoria's death takes place at the dawn of a new millennium, so the end of the 19th Century and the end of the Victorian Era occur together. Also, the British Empire will never again be as great or as grand as it was during Victoria's reign. It all makes for fascinating reading. The only flaw I could find in The Last Dayas of Glory involved a historical fact. The Russian Tsar and Tsarina, Nicholas and Alexandra (Victoria's favorite granddaughter) got married after Nicholas became tsar and not before. But other than this minor error, I find no fault here. Tony Renn

I was going to say "enjoyable and informative", but then thought that saying reading about someone dying was enjoyable wasn't quite right. However, the author has given us so much background and detail on what was going on in England at this time that I will say those parts were enjoyable!It seems unbelievable that the government apparently had not done much advance planning. It's as if no one thought the Queen was going to die. I was reminded of the smooth operation of the Queen Mother's funeral in April where everything went like clockwork. Queen Victoria had given a few orders for her funeral, but the details were left to others with the usual squabbling.I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the British Royal family.

This book covers, and covers quite well, the events surrounding the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. It's especially relevant now that the "Queen Mum" has passed away, for she was more than likely alive when Victoria died, the last connection in the British royal family to that era of pomp and circumstance. It's very interesting to see how death and services for royals were handled 100 years ago, when there were many more monarchies and the almost reverential attitude towards them had not been soured by WWI.Victoria was beloved by her people, and almost all of them could not remember another reigning monarch, since she ruled for 64 years, almost a lifetime in those days. There was genuine grief and fear at her departure, and a worry at the changing world everyone would face in her absence. A few years ago I read the book "Farewell In Splendor", which covers the same sets of facts, and both of these works are well worth reading. You will learn many things you didn't know about the end of the Victorian age, and perhaps have an air of nostalgia for what appears to be a quite different, and perhaps better, past.

It never seems to fail. Whenever I go on a trip and look up my route in a map, it always seems to be in the fold. Where I want to go is always obscured in the staples and bend of the book. So too this is an interesting moment in history that seems to have fallen into the divide between the Victorian and Edwardian periods. I feel that I owe a debt of gratitude to Tony Rennell for taking us through this fascinating moment in history. Victoria by no means had a trouble-free reign. She was at times highly unpopular and frequently criticized in society and the press. However, after sixty-three years on the throne her stamina and longevity had brought about almost universal admiration and respect from the people of her growing empire and the world in general. A time before her reign was beyond the living memory of most people in the world. The prospect of her death was to many even more unthinkable to many than the shadowy past of what had been before. This absorbing and readable book takes the reader into the royal residence at Osborne for a world-shaking event. The death of Victoria and the ascent of her dissolute heir Edward was a thing feared in many circles. She ruled and empire on which the sun never set and the advent of technology allowed the world to share this occasion in real-time for the first time. Eerily similar in many respects to the way the world reacted at the death of Diana and the events of September 11, the world seemed to stop spinning for those brief but unforgettable days in 1901. Stores were bereft of customers; places of business shut down while places of worship recorded record breaking attendance. But this is not a book concerned only with high deeds in high places. It is the story of a family about to lose their matriarch. It is about the usual squabbles over who is to see the dying woman and who is to make decisions on her behalf. This is a tale that almost any family member can relate to and it resonates with us all. I cannot think of a book about Victoria and her family that I have enjoyed more in many years. It is a must read.