The premise of this book intrigued me, the idea of first person accounts from forty seven different people. As a result she gained the epithet “Grandmother of Europe”. I’ve always been quite fascinated with the reign of Queen Victoria, she came to the throne as a very young woman (18), had a large family and then married them off across Europe with the intention of gaining more influence across the continent. Whilst thanks go to the publisher for the opportunity to read it, all opinions are my own. I was disappointed.ĭisclosure: I received a copy of this book free via NetGalley. Overall, if you know nothing about Queen Victoria’s children & Grandchildren, this is a nice overview and the short chapters make it accessible & not overwhelming, but you are literally getting a taster of the people with no more information than can be found in a quick Wikipedia search for Queen Victoria’s grandchildren. The author specialises in royal, church and European history, so I was excited that I would get new insights as I read, but unfortunately there was little evidence of research & certainly nothing new in this book. My parents were …”) and whilst this does make them accessible, it also makes them feel informal and quite childish in their tone. These short monologues are written in very short sentences, in quite a repetitive way (all start with “My name is …. There is definitely a unique angle in that he writes in the first person, so we “hear the voices” of the people - I found myself thinking that these would make great little monologues & could imagine a good actor dressed in period costume sitting on a chair talking to the camera in this “voice”. “Written entirely in the first person and fully based on accurate historical accounts, Michael Farah imagines how this royal family would have described the events of their extraordinary existence, scandals, loves, triumphs and tragedies”
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