Victoria and Albert by Richard

Victoria and Albert by Richard Hough

Richard Hough, author of Victoria and Albert is noted British historian with a long list of credentials, including the publishing of dozens of other biographies. In Victoria and Albert he offers a dual biography of Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, treating the couple almost as single subject as he explores their two decades of marriage and child rearing. This is the biography of a surprisingly typical couple despite their royal standing. Victoria and Albert are very much in love, even though their marriage was an arranged one. They have their typical arguments and their reconciliations, all the while raising their 9 children. Their story would have made an excellent reality show: "Victoria and Albert Plus 9." Sadly, Albert died from typhoid fever in 1861, but not before spending twenty glorious years with his beautiful wife.

There is no doubt that Hough is more than qualified to write this biography, and his expertise in British history provides a striking backdrop for the love story that he is chronicling. While most biographies are simply a chronological account of an individual's life, Hough does seem to actually be making a point in his biography of Victoria and Albert. The message that I believe he is intending for the reader to receive is that even a Queen and a Prince, whom many consider untouchable, are just people like the rest of us, experiencing the same trials and joys of marriage that we all experience. For example, Hough writes, "The child-bearing years brought Victoria and Albert many joys, many changes and many new stresses. They greatly enlarged Albert's responsibilities, which was excellent for him, but led to resentment in Victoria. She did not care for the delegating the powers she had enjoyed and was soon complaining about the 'unreasonable' amount of time which Albert's business took up" (172).

This passage could be describing just about any couple in the world. In fact it would be difficult to find a married couple for whom having children did not bring a combination of joy and stress. and, how many couples could claim never to have argued over the husband (or the wife) spending too much time at work and not enough quality time with the family? This is just one of numerous examples of how Hough shows the 'human' side of royalty and lets the reader know that in the end, people are just people.

In terms of the language used through the book and its appropriateness for an undergraduate curriculum, I found that Hough created just the right balance between over-sophistication and down-to-earth vernacular. The only concern I would have about this book for an undergraduate curriculum is that some of the sentences are extremely long and convoluted, making them a little bit difficult to follow.

Sometimes an entire paragraph is comprised of one sentence. For example, early on in the book Hough writes, "Leopold's own plan to counter the King's preference for the sons of the Prince of Orange and, he hoped, to please his sister and his niece, was to persuade the duchess to invite to Kensington Palace two of his nephews, Princes Ernest and Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, together with the grand-duke, their father" (27). Other than his proclivity for run-on sentences, I found Hugh's writing style and language level to reader-friendly for just about all types of audiences.

While overall this book makes a valuable contribution to the historical and biographical literature, there are a few areas of weakness which must also be addressed. For instance, while the subject matter is extremely comprehensive, there are areas of relevance which could have been included which were either ignored or quickly glossed over. One of the most notable of these is the circumstances that surrounded the arrangement of the marriage between Victoria and Albert. Also only referred to obscurely is the familial relationship between the couple, who are rumored to be cousins. Yet overall, the author does an extraordinary job of providing a comprehensive and logical argument that royalty are people too.

On the other hand, Hough is often quick to provide historical background information to flank the personal tale with helpful facts. For example, when discussing Prince Albert's death from typhoid, he throws in the interesting statistic that typhoid "was responsible for 30% of male deaths at the time" (202). He also lets the reader in on the fact that while typhoid is an infectious disease, it works much in the same way as chicken pox in that once someone has already had it, they cannot contract it again. Hough explains that Victoria had suffered a bout with typhoid fever in her childhood, which left her immune and therefore able to care for and comfort her husband until he died.

Hough walks a fine line between writing a love story fitting for daytime television or the tabloids, and writing an historical biographical document that addresses the relationship and the experiences of Victoria and Albert from a factual standpoint. His provision of historical references that exist outside the marriage, such the one discussed above regarding typhoid, help to keep the author from crossing the line between biography and narrative. Adding even more historical credibility to the work, and to the author, is the fact that he provides a detailed chronological timeline, as well as a genealogical map, at the beginning of the book for reference purposes.