Book : Victoria A Life - Wilson, A. N.

-Titulo Original : Victoria A Life

-Fabricante :

Penguin Books

-Descripcion Original:

“[A] shimmering and rather wonderful biography.” -The Guardian (London)When Queen Victoria died in 1901, she had ruled for nearly sixty-four years. She was the mother of nine and grandmother of forty-two and the matriarch of royal Europe through her children’s marriages. To many, Queen Victoria is a ruler shrouded in myth and mystique, an aging, stiff widow paraded as the figurehead to an all-male imperial enterprise. But in truth, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch was one of the most passionate, expressive, humorous, and unconventional women who ever lived, and the story of her life continues to fascinate.A. N. Wilson’s exhaustively researched and definitive biography includes a wealth of new material from previously unseen sources to show us Queen Victoria as she’s never been seen before. Wilson explores the curious set of circumstances that led to Victoria’s coronation, her strange and isolated childhood, her passionate marriage to Prince Albert and his pivotal influence even after death, and her widowhood and subsequent intimate friendship with her Highland servant John Brown, all set against the backdrop of this momentous epoch in Britain’s history-and the world’s.Born at the very moment of the expansion of British political and commercial power across the globe, Victoria went on to chart a unique course for her country even as she became the matriarch of nearly every great dynasty of Europe. Her destiny was thus interwoven with those of millions of people-not just in Europe but in the ever-expanding empire that Britain was becoming throughout the nineteenth century. The famed queen had a face that adorned postage stamps, banners, statues, and busts all over the known world.Wilson’s Victoria is a towering achievement, a masterpiece of biography by a writer at the height of his powers.*Read the book, then watch the PBS series Victoria, starring Jenna Coleman (Dr. Who), Rufus Sewell (Pillars of the Earth), Dame Diana Rigg (Game of Thrones), and Tom Hughes (About Time).* Review The Washington Post: “Wilson’s [biography of Queen Victoria] may be the best I have read…This volume is surely the capstone of his career so far as that particular subject is concerned, not merely a persuasive, unsentimental but admiring and engaging portrait of the great woman herself, but a vivid account of the world in which she lived and to which she contributed so much.” The Wall Street Journal: “[An] engaging biography…Mr. Wilson takes on the long journey of the queen’s life with an assured, affectionate portrait written in accessible prose. His Victoria is a vivid personality, kindly, combative and impetuous by turns, deeply conscious of the dignity of her office and, for all her faults, ‘loveable.Seattle Times: “Masterful…Wilson has crafted a thoughtful… often deliciously entertaining tale of a unique monarch and a woman of unexpected quirk and charm…Wilson, one of those rare biographers who knows something of wit…smoothly takes us through Victoria’s long journey: her love match with her beloved Prince Albert, her ‘operatic’ mourning after his early death, her up-and-down relationships with a caravan of prime ministers, her transformation in her later years into a figure whose influence was felt far beyond Britain, her complex feelings toward her children, her ultimate embrace by her subjects.”Financial Times:“What to call [A. N. Wilson] now? Eminent Victorianist seems appropriate. Lytton Strachey, the acerbic author of Eminent Victorians as well as a biography of Victoria far less good than this, is never far away when Wilson writes about a period that, in several books, he has made very much his own... Wilson is an excellent history teacher. He orders and narrates the hugely complex socio-political events and party infighting of the 19th century with a rare clarity... Wilson sums up his feelings about Victoria in a single word: Awe. His own achievement, sustained by a lifetime’s scholarly fascinati