An utterly enjoyable account of Victoria’s familial relationships.
The Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces in England shares her unique access to the quotidian history of English royals to treat us to another delightful story from the inside.
Worsley (Jane Austen at Home, 2017, etc.) is helped in this instance by Victoria’s penchant for saving outfits she wore at important milestones, right down to the shoes, and the author provides significant insight into her attitude to the throne. At first, she was a headstrong young woman trying to break away from the influence of her mother and John Conroy. Her father’s friend and servant, Conroy devised a system that he and Victoria’s mother used to control all aspects of her life. It was a system designed to ensure their power when she ascended the throne, whether as regents or advisers. Luckily, Victoria was sufficiently headstrong to reject them both. As queen, she relied on Lord Melbourne, a father figure, for advice, and she exhibited her strong emotional intelligence. After her marriage to Albert, she fell under his orderly, dispassionate intellect; luckily, she retained the empathy that made her beloved. Still, he often infantilized her, downplaying her abilities. As a mother, Victoria came up short, as Worsley amply shows. She didn’t enjoy her children except that they made Albert happy. She was tyrannical and never nursed them, since that would have made her feel “like a cow or a dog.” Albert’s influence was reflected in her thinking that women were inferior to men and therefore had no right to vote. She held him up as the unattainable perfection that none of her children would ever attain. Her grief at Albert’s death and interminable mourning are legendary, but it also made her realize that no one could have mastery over her. John Brown caused no end of consternation, but it was he who brought her back to the people. She made few public appearances, but photographs and two books she wrote about Albert took the place of her presence.
An utterly enjoyable account of Victoria’s familial relationships.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20142-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
