It was a very long book to start my 2019 reading year. However, Queen Victoria did live a very long and sensational life.

I've always admired Queen Victoria. England went thru many great changes during her reign. She is known as a woman who redefined British monarchy. Thankfully to this book, I've learned many new facts about Victoria. I was not aware of "baby race" prior to this book. And it was great to learn more about her parents. And there were many new details about her favorite attendants: Munshi and John Brown. Her relationship with Disraeli and Lord Melbourne. Also, this book confirmed my theory about Albert and Victoria's marriage and bond.

This book is a great introduction to the Queen's life. However, just keep in mind that this book is not about Victoria's twenty-four specific days that have changed her life, the writer has divided her life into twenty-four periods. In my opinion, the book is very well written, thoughtfully sorted, each chapter of the Queen's life is covered equally. It is quite captivating. I really like Lucy Worsley's style of writing. She makes it into a fascinating story instead of just counting Victoria's biography facts.

Thank you NetGalley and MacMillan publisher for a free copy of this book.

Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, and Widow is a biography of the infamous English monarch told through events spanning twenty-four important days of her life. This was a very well researched account of Queen Victoria and includes details from her personal journals to allow the author to build a more personal biographical account of the monarch. I felt the author paid too much attention to detail to the supporting characters in her life. Throughout the book, paragraphs would be dedicated to events or personal details of those close to Victoria and just one sentence or two would be used to discuss how those events impacted Victoria herself. The balance was just a bit off for me and I found myself skimming paragraphs just to get to the point at times. Regardless, this book does provide a good comprehensive biographical account of the monarch's life and is recommended for anyone interested in getting more personal insights into Queen Victoria.

Just in time for the premiere of the third season of Victoria on Masterpiece Classic on PBS on 13 January 2019, this new biography of one of the United Kingdom's (and the world's) most famous queen arrives like a gift on a red velvet pillow for fans of the TV series and British history to devour and adore.

In her usually upbeat and engaging style, social historian and Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, Lucy Worsley's biography of Queen Victoria is a selective view of the life of the most powerful woman of her generation. Structured in 24 significant dates in her life, it is a personal look at her family history, social context and her inner thoughts and impressions. Drawing upon a variety of sources including her own personal diaries and of those around her, Worsley also adds quotes and references from the Queen's major biographers and historians of the era.

While this is written for pleasure readers, scholars will be happy to discover that all of the sources are cited in the text and detailed in the back. I have read other recent biographies of Queen Victoria, but Worsley and her vivacious and earthy style brought the life of Victoria, her family history & dynamics, vividly to life for me in a new way. Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life, will alter your previous perceptions of the Queen, her husband Albert, her family, and her realm.

Laurel Ann, Austenprose.com

"The story of the queen who defied convention and defined an era.

A passionate princess, an astute and clever queen, and a cunning widow, Victoria played many roles throughout her life. In Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow, Lucy Worsley introduces her as a woman leading a truly extraordinary life in a unique time period. Queen Victoria simultaneously managed to define a socially conservative vision of Victorian womanhood, while also defying its conventions. Beneath her exterior image of traditional daughter, wife, and widow, she was a strong-willed and masterful politician.

Drawing from the vast collection of Victoria’s correspondence and the rich documentation of her life, Worsley recreates twenty-four of the most important days in Victoria's life. Each day gives a glimpse into the identity of this powerful, difficult queen and the contradictions that defined her. Queen Victoria is an intimate introduction to one of Britain’s most iconic rulers as a wife and widow, mother and matriarch, and above all, a woman of her time."

Lucy Worsley has become the go to historian for all things British and her newest book isn't an exception so be sure to check it out, especially if you're suffering from Victoria withdrawals...

Tl;dr: Queen Victoria: Twenty Four Days that Changed Her Life has an mouthful of a title but is an engaging piece of popular culture history.

It focuses on 24 "days" or periods in Queen Victoria's life, covering the period from her birth to death, with roughly half the book devoted to her early life and marriage to Prince Albert, with the remainder focusing on her widowhood and later reign.

Covering Queen Victoria is a lot--she ruled for over sixty years, and was an astonishing popular figure for most of her life.

By breaking her long life and reign into 24 sections, readers are able to get an overview of Victoria moving from sheltered princess to new Queen, to wife, and then to how she used (unwittingly or not) popular opinion to solidify her presence and pave the way for popular consumption of British royalty today.

It's impossible, given the constraints of the book, to be an exhaustive biography of Victoria, but cleverly, Lucy Worsley focuses instead on how Victoria constructed her own life in both private and in public.

Even as a teenager, Victoria was aware of her power, and the way she maneuvered through what she felt were the machinations of her mother and her mother's closest adviser into her own woman, a young Queen, is fascinating.

Equally as interesting is how she constructed the narrative of her marriage. I didn't realize how their marriage started (she proposed) nor did I realize that she spent her entire marriage being happy to be lectured to and being told to not have intemperate displays (you know, feelings) -- Victoria felt it was a love match, but that love came only as she completely bent to Albert's will.

I did know she was a largely indifferent mother who ended up disappointed by her eldest son and that she pretty much yoked her last child (Beatrice) to her, and I wish there had been more about her relationships with her other children, but as there were 7 others and she outlived several of them, that would be an entire book in and of itself.

Queen Victoria: Twenty Four Days is at its weakest when examining the close friendships she formed with male members of her household later in life in that there is so much time devoted to how the relationships weren't romantic that I never got a sense of what they were actually like.

The sections on her final years, especially her Diamond Jubilee, don't break any new ground, but do provide a good introduction to how Victoria instinctively nutured the cult of personality around herself as both a woman and Queen.

Given that there's a fair amount of both television and film released about her early years recently, as well as best selling historical fiction, this book fits in very well--it is presented in an interesting way, it's readable (not always the case with popular history) and the sources offer several other books that readers can follow up with.

Overall, a well written book with a very engaging concept.

A solid biogrpahy of Victoria's life which covers all the high notes without becoming bogged down in the seductive quicksand of the mass of documents, diaries, letters, and familial and court drama. Her parents' marriage, a little of the Kensington system, the coronation, the brief summer of Melbourne, engagement to Albert, marriage, children, widowhood - the span of her life is well telescoped. I've read most of the biographies Worsley draws upon, so not much is new to me here, and I would always enjoy more minutiae from the archives, but for a popular biography aimed at readers who haven't, this is a very good approach which does accurately give a sense of the major events and eras in Victoria's long reign, well-written and interesting.

Author Lucy Worsley presents 24 important events in Queen Victoria's life. The events help explain how Victoria managed to live and rule as a single girl, wife and mother during restrictive Victorian times. At the end of her book you will find plenty of endnotes (acknowledgments) allowing the reader to further research Victoria's life, if desired.

Recommend.

Review written after downloading a galley from NetGalley.

Lucy Worsley writes about history in a very accessible style, and her biography of Queen Victoria is an enjoyable read. She frames the biography in an interesting way: by selecting 24 meaningful days and using them as a springboard to explain the queen's life and development.
This technique feels most effective in the first part of the book, where Victoria's childhood, accession to the throne, engagement, and marriage form a natural narrative. Where she begins to leap forward in time to the middle and late parts of the queen's life, I began to feel like I was just getting peeps through small windows and missing a connected story. Still, she does a good job at filling in context and bringing the reader up to speed for the events of the days she has chosen.
In a way, this is not a biography in the conventional sense, because it doesn't cover the facts exhaustively; it does leave large gaps. Instead, it chooses to focus more on what made the queen the way she was, and examples of her personality and relations with her family.

Worsley provides twenty four vignettes in Queen Victoria's life. She adds much material to supplement the chosen significant dates. Nothing earth shattering is revealed but readers do get a better sense of the woman behind the crown. I decour every book about Queen Victoria And reading this book was a pleasure. The author provides an extensive bibliography and notes at the end which were fun to peruse.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free e-ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review!

This is one of my favourite books from Lucy Worsley! Queen Victoria can be an overwhelming and sometimes infuriating monarch to study; there is just so much to sift through. In addition to all of her own diaries and letters (which is staggering amount of sources to begin with), you then have surviving diaries and correspondence from those who came into contact with her, and then newspapers, court circulars, and countless others. All of that to say, Lucy's plan to view Victoria's life through specific episodes and days is brilliant.

I appreciate that Lucy highlights both the strengths and flaws of her subjects, and Victoria, Albert, et al, are no exception. She gives enough background to the day being featured so that you understand where the "players" are coming from, and the history that might contribute to it, but also focuses on the day itself. I love that she recognises that Albert's very specific upbringing played a big role in his behaviour on his visits to England, which in turn affected how Victoria perceived him.

Being co-Chief Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces has allowed Lucy to immerse herself in royal history for over a decade now, and I think that that shines through this book!

Very interesting view of Queen Victoria. The volumes of her writings allows for in depth review of her reign. The length of her reign makes it challenging to study all of it but Lucy Worsley does a great job of dissecting 24 points.

Recent books and films have overturned the popular image of Queen Victoria as a dour recluse widow of ponderous dimensions to include the lively, stubborn girl-queen who loved dancing and wine and the young wife who enjoyed sex.

Lucy Worsley wanted to expand Victoria's story beyond the "dancing princess to potato" to include the woman who preserved the monarchy and ruled an empire. Worsley draws from Victoria's diaries and journals, probing behind the polished exterior presented for posterity. Her Victoria is a fully human, complicated, person, someone we can admire and dislike at the same time.

The book concentrates on twenty-four days in Victoria's life through which readers come to understand her family background and relationships, her love for Albert (who both supported and limited her as queen), the places she loved, her political alliances and battles, the few people who became more than servants and valued as trusted friends, and her grief, loneliness, and physical incapacities in old age.

Worsley writes in the preface, "I hope that seeing her [Victoria] up close, examining her face-to-face, as she lived hour-to-hour through twenty-four days of her life, might help you to imagine meeting her yourself, so that you can form your own opinion on the contradictions at the heart of British history's most recognizable woman."

The physical woman Victoria is given attention. At her prime, Victoria was 5 feet and 1 1/4 inch tall, with tiny feet, large blue prominent eyes, and a "fine bust." Her lower lip hung open, but she also had a wide-open smile when delighted. Her weight yo-yoed with health, illness, pregnancy, dieting, and the incapacitation that in old age left her unable to walk. And she loved to walk on a brisk, cold day.

Victoria ruled throughout most of the 19th c when monarchies across Europe were ended by revolutions. She came to the throne with everything against her, especially being a young and inexperienced girl.

She was constantly being watched for signs of madness, both genetic and related to the "female problems" which were believed to trigger hysteria and madness.

It was imperative that she marry and it was arranged she marry her German cousin Albert. She fell in love with his beauty and goodness. To compensate for his parental scandalous infidelities he was committed to being a loving father and husband. But Albert was a German and he had to win the British people's trust and love. His German coldness and exacting values could be hard to live with. He did not approve of Victoria's love of dancing and drinking.

With Victoria perpetually pregnant (nine times!), Albert applied himself to fulfill her duties. Victoria came to rely on his guidance; his early death was devastating to her as queen as well as wife.

In spite of her liaisons with unsuitable friends, the gilly John Brown and the Muslim Abdul, Victoria became the public image of the proper Victorian wife and widow, an "ordinary good woman."

I found the book to be vastly interesting and enjoyable. It expanded my understanding of Victoria. It amazed me how much of Victoria's life Worsley covered in those twenty-four days!

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

A look at 24 important days in Wueen Victoria’s life.A camera shot glimpse of these historic days.A-glimpse at Queen Victoria at these critical real days that changed her life.An excellent read brings history alive. #netgallety #st.martinsbooks,

I’ve always been fascinated by the Victorian era but have had a harder time with biographies of Queen Victoria herself. This one was a bit different. Instead of a detailed chronology, the author shares 24 snapshots of important events in the Queen’s life. I think this worked quite well here as there are an overwhelming amount of details available and a biographer (and reader) could easily get bogged down. A bit slow-moving at times, but I did enjoy this. 3.5 stars