Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers: A Personal History
Anne Somerset (William Collins, £30)
QUEEN VICTORIA came to the throne at 18, small, lively and feminine. She had little knowledge of the male world of politics, although she had developed a mind of her own, having resisted the odious Capt Conroy, her mother’s intimate, who had been seeking to control her. Once Queen, her girlhood was over and she was all but alone. The one person on whom she could depend for help was the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.
Witty and worldly, the widowed Melbourne, then in his late fifties, doted on his new sovereign. Wearing his responsibilities as head of government lightly, he would spend all day with her and she resented the time he was away. ‘I have no doubt he is passionately fond of her,’ wrote diarist Charles Greville, ‘as he might be of a daughter if he had one, and the more because
