Audiobook11 hours
A Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert, and the Death That Changed the British Monarchy
Written by Helen Rappaport
Narrated by Wanda McCaddon
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
After the untimely death of Prince Albert, the Queen and her nation were plunged into a state of grief so profound that this one event would dramatically alter the shape of the British monarchy. For Britain had not just lost a prince: during his twenty year marriage to Queen Victoria, Prince Albert had increasingly performed the function of King in all but name. The outpouring of grief after Albert's death was so extreme, that its like would not be seen again until the death of Princess Diana one hundred and thirty-six years later.Drawing on many letters, diaries and memoirs from the Royal Archives and other neglected sources, as well as the newspapers of the day, Helen Rappaport offers a new perspective on this compelling historical psychodrama-the crucial final months of the prince's life and the first long, dark ten years of the Queen's retreat from public view. She draws a portrait of a queen obsessed with her husband and-after his death-with his enduring place in history. Magnificent Obsession also sheds new light on the true nature of the prince's chronic physical condition, overturning for good the one hundred and fifty-year-old myth that he died of typhoid fever.
Author
Helen Rappaport
Helen Rappaport was born in Bromley, Kent, and studied Russian at Leeds University, before working as a translator and copy editor. She has been a full-time writer for more than twenty-three years, and in 2003 discovered and purchased an 1869 portrait of Mary Seacole that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, sparking a long investigation into Seacole’s life and career.
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Reviews for A Magnificent Obsession
Rating: 3.9756097317073174 out of 5 stars
4/5
41 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This was an excellent look at the events in 1861 that defined British Court life for forty years. Queen Victoria was utterly disconsolate following her husband's death. This book explores the Queen's grief in a way that none other has before. Taking us into the mind of Victoria, as well as the mind of the country. The population became increasingly frustrated with her constant grief and sheer inability to show herself in public. Indeed, the loss of her husband and her grief at his death became the Queen's chief occupation, surpassing that of ruling her country. This work also calls into question the capability of the doctors attending Prince Albert, and makes us wonder if it really was typhoid fever that carried him off. Recommended reading!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Where I got the book: purchased on Amazon.I guess I haven't read an in-depth biography of Queen Victoria before, just scads and scads of books about the era, and my view of the Queen was the standard one: a great monarch but also a passionately engaged family woman, who was distraught about her husband's death and remained in mourning for him for the rest of her life but otherwise got on with queening.This thoroughly entertaining history has revised my view. QUITE a bit. I heard Helen Rappaport talk about the book on BBC radio and knew I had to read it, and I'm so glad I did. Let's use headings to sort out my thoughts about what I learned.Albert the King: I always thought of Albert as a bit of a second fiddle, but NO. Late in the book Rappaport makes the point that Albert's death probably saved Victoria as queen, because (since she was pregnant for much of their lives together) he basically took over all of the important work and let her sink into the role of gutes Weibchen (good little wifey) that she obviously relished. I'm guessing that Victoria LOVED being dominated by Albert with his strict principles and relentless pursuit of excellence (between them they made their eldest son and heir's childhood a living hell) and her attitude toward him seems to have been remarkably fawning for a woman who was quite the domineering Queenie when she was single. It's telling that her faithful servant of the post-Albert period, John Brown, was a similarly domineering figure (he called her 'wumman'. AHAHAHAHAHAHA)Passive-aggressive much? But on the other hand, Queen Vic appears to have taken her revenge against Albert being the boss of her by insisting that all the rooms be kept very cold with the windows open even though her poor dear husband was ever a-shiver and wore a wig at breakfast to keep his pate warm. And she treated all of his health problems as little sniffoos until it was TOO LATE. Did she have a...Death wish? Victoria was given to excessive mourning and a lugubrious interest in death. When her mother died she went completely off the deep end, to the point where Albert got on her case about self-indulgence etc. etc. Putting that side by side with the above point, I wonder: Did Queen Vic secretly WISH her husband dead so she could revel in widow's weeds forever without the inconvenience of the Man of the Palace putting his foot down against it?Malingering, tippling and spending money on statues; wouldn't YOU fire this woman? Mourning provided a perfect excuse for Queen Vic to do pretty much what she liked, which was essentially to stay on vacation forever. This caused some constitutional crises in a system where the monarch theoretically had her hand on the tiller of the realm; her ministers were supposed to consult her about all sorts of things but she was usually miles away in both physical and emotional terms. And she spent what today would probably be millions of public money putting up statues and other memorials to Albert against his express wishes (although this did give us the Albert Hall, where my first degree ceremony was held, the Natural History and Victoria & Albert museums where I spent many a happy hour as a student, and Imperial College where I was, for a brief but glorious moment, a TV presenter. So I pretty much owe the early 80s to Queen Vic's obsessions).A redemptive note: And somehow she got away with it all, eventually growing up a bit and emerging as everyone's favorite Queen Grandma. Except if you were one of her long-suffering children. If Rappaport shows redemption, it's in extremely summary form and I'm glad of it. Hooray for the one-sided argument!This is such a great story of nuttiness on the throne that I'd heartily recommend it to all Victoria fans, whether you agree with Rappaport's interpretation or not. At the least it'll give you something to rail against. Very nicely written, really quite short (248 pages of text plus a short discussion of Albert's symptoms) and, if these things matter to you, the US hardback edition is beeeeyooootifully bound and presented. I do love a hardback book that lays open obediently at your page wherever you are in the book, so my thanks go out to St. Martin's Press.Conclusion: what are you waiting for? Go read it and tell me what YOU think.