Exclusive interview with author Matthew Dennison and a review of his biography of Queen Victoria
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I can’t remember a time when I haven’t wanted to write about Queen Victoria,” says Queen Victoria: a Life of Contradictions author Matthew Dennison. “I had previously written a biography of Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice. I wanted to write a book which captured the many threads of Victoria’s complex character.”
A fascinating read for history buffs, Dennison’s book is a character study in the contradictions of Queen Victoria. The book focuses on her early years and the people who shaped her. Her mother, her mother’s brother King Leopold of Belgium, her governess and then her husband Prince Albert, about whom Victoria was very sentimental. After his early death she went into mourning for the last 40 years of her life. She was a hard parent to her nine children but thanks to Dennison’s thorough research, you will understand why Victoria turned out as she did. Dennison goes beyond the Victoria found in most history books, which is illuminating, but his sentence structure is sometimes fractured and old fashioned.
Growing up, Victoria lives in the shadow of her mother. She is never permitted to walk down the stairs without someone holding her hand. She has no privacy and her mother reads her diary ever night. With her mother cautioning her daily about her hedonistic uncles, she becomes a prude. After she becomes queen and moves into Buckingham Palace, Victoria banishes her mother to another part of the palace. Intelligent and fascinated by new technology, Victoria watches the rise of the railway and photography and relies heavily on Melbourne and her other ministers.
“I hope this book, which is light in tone but intensively researched, will encourage people to look further into Victoria’s life,” says Dennison, “particularly at a moment when our present Queen’s life offers such interesting parallels with, but also points of divergence from, that of her great-great-grandmother.”
“More than a century after her death, Queen Victoria remains a leviathan figure in both British and world history,” says Dennison. “In particular I’ve long been fascinated by Victoria’s assiduous control of her sprawling inkblot of a family, dynastic tentacles she stretched across the continent of Europe and beyond. The commission to write a short biography forced me to sharpen my thoughts and arrive at some sort of conclusion about this fascinating woman.”
In writing this book, Dennison benefited from an initiative by the Royal Collection to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II. “In 2012, all of Queen Victoria’s Journals were digitized and made available online,” says Dennison. “I think I am the first biographer to have been able to read Victoria’s Journals online in their entirety like this. I always use pictorial material as well as written sources in my research. Victoria commissioned portraiture on a heroic scale. Those paintings and her carefully crafted iconography tell us so much about how she viewed herself and her royal role.”
The legacy of Victoria’s reign is indelibly stamped on much of modern Britain, but Victoria as a person remains imperfectly understood both at home and abroad, Dennison’s book changes that.
This is the fourth of five biographies from Dennison. Dennison’s biography of Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter Princess Beatrice, The Last Princess was also published by St Martin’s Press. In addition to The Last Princess and Queen Victoria: A Life of Contradictions Dennison wrote Livia: Empress of Rome and The Twelve Caesars. Next in the series is, Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West.
Dennison lives with his wife in a Regency house that includes a converted chapel on the slopes of a hill in North Wales. They also live part-time in Shropshire in England’s Border County. He was born in the cathedral city of Durham, in the north of England.
Queen Victoria a Life of Contradictions by Matthew Dennison. Hardcover: 208 pages. Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (June 24, 2014) Language: English. ISBN-10: 1250048893, ISBN-13: 978-1250048899.
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