After spending nearly two months struggling through Dan Franck’s The Bohemians, I needed something of an intellectual palette cleanser, preferably back in a subject area where I already had some prior grounding. I settled on this large hardback picture book that was released as a companion to the 2016 ITV series.

As the title implies, this is composed mainly of the private letters and journals that Victoria herself wrote from her early childhood until around the time she first gave birth (which is when the first season of the TV show ends). Victoria is unusual among British monarchs in the fact that so many of her personal written thoughts have been maintained and made public – some even during her own lifetime.

The book runs to three hundred pages, but the text density is rather low so I got through the entire book in just four days. The final twenty-eight pages are about the making of the TV series, with everything up to that point being about the real life of Victoria with the fictional series rarely acknowledged.

The book overall is both visually lavish and textually engaging, though I found a few errors along the way:

• The photograph of a palace interior on pages 44-5 exposes part of the metal ceiling of the hangar in which the set was built.
• The photographs on pages 144 and 228 show overhead power lines in the background.
• Page 131 describes Victoria’s uncle Ernest Augustus as “heir apparent” instead of “heir presumptive”.
• Page 294 says of Prince Albert that “as Victoria’s husband he automatically became a member of the Order of the Garter” which was not true; he was appointed to the order almost two months before the wedding.
• Page 294 also includes a quote from costume designer Rosalind Ebbutt claiming “The garter traditionally went round the knee, but Queen Victoria was the first woman to be elevated to the Order of the Garter and she couldn’t wear it on her leg because it wouldn’t be visible. So she had a special one made that buckled around her arm, over her sleeve.” which is a bit misleading: Victoria was never “elevated to” the order, rather she became its sovereign automatically when acceding to the throne. The custom of wearing the garter on the arm instead of the leg was also exhibited by Anne, Britain’s previous queen regnant*. There were, of course, Ladies of the Garter before her.
• The cast list on page 300 includes Nicholas Agnew as Prince George twice.

A further note is really more a problem with the series itself than the tie-in book: Victoria & Albert’s wedding is noted to have taken place in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, but the set shown in the episode looks nothing like that and bears far more resemblance to St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle instead.

Heraldic banners show up in multiple photographs in the book, I have already written an article about one particular instance, but perhaps an armorial viewing of the series in general is in order at some point. I notice also that when personal letters are reproduced they are topped by an illustration of the royal arms which came into use during Victoria’s reign, indicated by the lack of the Hanoverian inescutcheon, even when the letter is meant to predate her accession. Of course, little Drina was never actually granted differenced arms prior to that so I don’t know what image would have been appropriate here!

It is a shame that no similar books were written for seasons 2 and 3, and indeed that the TV series as a whole seems to have been quietly dropped after 2019, for I would have enjoyed seeing the whole of the Victorian age covered this way.

*See “The Orders of Knighthood and the Formation of the British Honours System, 1660-1760” by Antti Matikkala, pp 324-6.