The Illustrated Queen Victoria

lytton strachey is my favorite non-fiction writer. he writes non-fiction that is flawless and beautiful. some of the writing in this book is as good as any writing i've seen anywhere. but who cares? who cares? what a shameful culture has been fashioned that has no room for this.

This life of Queen Victoria set a new standard for biographies when it was written and it still reads very well today. To the modern ear some of Strachey's language may at times be a bit dry. That aside this is an excellent study of the development of Victoria from infancy to old age. The entanglement's of family and the influence of key ministers is well covered and documented . Especially interesting is the treatment of Prince Albert and the Queen's relationship. I found this to be quite an informative book and would highly recommend it to anyone with a curiosity regarding this period of British history.

A readable and fairly brief account of Victoria. Frequent passages from Victoria's girlhood diary and letters make Victoria's early life particularly vivid reading. Also fascinating is Victoria's relationship with her government, and her tendency to cling to the current prime minister and despise the Opposition, whoever they might be.The enigmatic Prince Albert, and his evolving relationship with Victoria, is presented well. Strachey makes some startling suggestions about what Britain might have turned into, had Albert lived longer (answer: Prussia). This book is elegantly written, and free of the psychobabble one might expect from a more modern book. The book is not boring. Although Victoria is always proper, there is plenty of adultery and dysfunctional family behavior among her many adult children.

This book is a "must have" for anyone interested in royalty or history in general. It's a lovely book in a scaled down coffee table format.

I enjoyed this detailed book about Queen Victoria's life. It had a lot of detail, but the writing style was a bit dry and old-fashioned (the book was written a while ago). It also didn't have as much detail of her life after Prince Albert died, which was unfortunate. It was sympathetic to her and generally very informative. I would recommend this book highly to people seeking to learn more about Queen Victoria, but not to someone seeking "light reading" as it is a bit hard to read due to the older writing style.