Queen Victoria

''The truth was stranger than any of the fictions that have since been offered to explain her away''Drawing upon Queen Victoria''s previously unpublished journals, Elizabeth Longford''s classic biography recalls the contrasts and curiosities of an earlier era with exquisite detail - and transforms the queen from a severe, time-worn effigy into a human being who loved, feared and fumed. Longford probes the contradictions of a woman who wore a bonnet instead of a crown at her Golden Jubilee and yet was recognised always as both dignified and formidable. She chronicles both the Queen''s public life and her emotional travails, including surprisingly stormy passages in her and Prince Albert''s otherwise loving marriage. A refreshingly human image of the Queen emerges: voluble, passionate, politic and articulate, with an irresistible mixture of grandeur and simplicity.''Dazzlingly readable, and very enjoyable'' Stella Gibbons''Queen Victoria has in Lady Longford her fullest and best-informed, most sensible and sympathetic biographer'' The Times''Gives us more than the general reader has ever had, revealing the Queen as a character at once simple and complex, authoritarian and humble'' Daily Telegraph