Queen Victoria
Last Sunday I had the privilege of appearing at the Canberra Writers’ Festival in conversation with Julia Baird. The subject of our session was Julia’s recent biography, Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman who Ruled an Empire (HarperCollins). Near the end of her life, facing the gloomy prospect of yet another ministry led by Mr. Gladstone, Queen Victoria confided to her eldest daughter the Empress Frederick, “These are trying moments & [it] seems to me a defect in our much famed Constitution, to have to part with an admirable Gov[ernmen]t. like L[or]d. Salisbury’s for no question of any importance, or any particular reason, [but] merely on account of the number of votes.” (6 July 1892, Royal Archives, Windsor, Vic. Add. MSS, U32). To her credit, and to be fair, Queen Victoria did indeed part with successive governments on these very grounds, but she was probably the last British sovereign who was able to maintain in semi-private s...