Daniel Snowman
Victoria as Personal and Public Embodiment of Her Controversial Era

Daniel reflects on the public and private life of Queen Victoria, the universally celebrated leader of the ever-growing British ‘Empire’. Raised in the home of her widowed mother, Victoria experienced a difficult childhood before becoming Queen at 18. Two years later, she married her German cousin, Prince Albert, with whom she had nine children and to whom she gave her full support in all the projects he helped to undertake – notably the Great Exhibition of 1851. Albert died in 1861 and Victoria, heartbroken, withdrew from many of her public duties and wore black mourning clothes for the rest of her life. Gradually, however, the ‘Widow of Windsor’ became a close friend of Disraeli, Empress of India, and the ‘Grandmother of Europe’.