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INTRODUCTION

THE HEART AND MIND OF A YOUNG QUEEN

‘All trades must be learned, and nowadays the trade of a constitutional Sovereign, to do it well, is a very difficult one.’

– King Leopold to Queen Victoria –

– 16 January 1838 –

FEW MONARCHS IN BRITISH HISTORY have been so extensively written about as Queen Victoria. Like Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, it seems that nothing can dim our enduring fascination with her or our hunger for new film and TV dramatisations of her life. Much like her two charismatic Tudor predecessors, Queen Victoria has been the subject of endless interpretation and re-evaluation, and one might think there is nothing new left to say, no new revelations to be made.

Until now, most dramatisations have concentrated on the older, more mature queen, and in particular on her life after Albert, as a widow. But in this new eight-part series for ITV, screenwriter Daisy Goodwin has put the Queen’s very first faltering steps as monarch under the microscope.

‘This book, Mamma gave me’

– Victoria –

ON 31 JULY 1832, the first page of the story of Victoria’s long life was written, when as a 13-year-old princess and already Heir Presumptive to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, she inscribed the flyleaf of the shiny new red leather journal presented to her by her mother:

This book, Mamma gave me, that I might write the journal of my journey to Wales.

~ VICTORIA’S JOURNAL, 31 JULY 1832

Over the next 70 years, what began as an educational exercise in recording the relatively mundane events of her young life, to be submitted for daily inspection to her governess and her mother, would grow into 141 handwritten volumes – probably the greatest and most enduring personal record written by any queen at any time in history.

Beginning with her first childish observations of people, places and events, young Princess Victoria recorded a detailed description of her daily life at Kensington Palace, her love for her dolls and her dog Dash; and spoke poignantly of her isolation from the outside world. On her accession in 1837, and moving to Buckingham Palace, she filled the pages of her journals with fascinating accounts of the people who made the greatest impression on her (notably her first prime minister, Lord Melbourne), her hopes and aspirations about the onerous responsibility of becoming Queen that had been thrust upon her very young shoulders, and the joy of finding love and a happy marriage, so rare in the dynastic scheme of things.

In tandem with her diary, Queen Victoria’s enormous output of letters dating from 1832 chart a queen in the making and show her wrestling with some of the challenging political issues of her day and making her first difficult decisions as monarch.

This book, in tandem with the television series, tells the touching and intimate developing story of the young princess who became Queen in 1837, based closely on her journals and letters and featuring many key quotations from them. The Victoria Letters reveals at first hand a view of the queen who became our second-longest-reigning monarch after Queen Elizabeth II, with all her quirks and foibles, her impetuosity and her compassion.

~ HELEN RAPPAPORT, JUNE 2016