QUEEN VICTORIA: A Portrait By Giles St Aubyn (Sceptre, $175) ANYONE who believes a royal scandal is an invention of the 20th century press would do well to read this entertaining portrait of the most remarkable monarch of the last century. The parallels are extraordinary.
Take 1889 for instance. By its end the Prince of Wales had survived another public humiliation by the skin of his teeth. Already known as an adulterer, it had taken the threat of exposure through judicious use of the newspapers to stop the future Edward VII from interfering publicly in the affairs of a member of the aristocracy.
They needed no Edwardgate tapes; the fact that the future King of England had been toying with the man's wife was sufficient scandal to bring the royal name into further disrepute.
Queen Victoria, on this occasion and others, was known to fear privately for the monarchy's future. Radicals were already questioning its value in financial terms. Overpriced and unsupervised they said. It should make way for the republic.
Giles St Aubyn wrote his book before the worst of the recent scandals hit Victoria's great-great granddaughter and her off-spring.
Even if he had been aware of them, such parallels would not have been part of a book which investigates the character of Britain's longest-serving monarch and traces the changes in her character and her family's progress as her reign made its way throughthe industrial revolution to the days of empire.