In this companion biography to the acclaimed Victoria, A. N. Wilson
offers a deeply textured and ambitious portrait of Prince Albert,
published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the royal consort's
birth.
For more than six decades, Queen Victoria ruled a great Empire at the
height of its power. Beside her for more than twenty of those years was
the love of her life, her trusted husband and father of their nine
children, Prince Albert. But while Victoria is seen as the embodiment of
her time, its values, and its paradoxes, it was Prince Albert, A. N.
Wilson expertly argues, who was at the vanguard of Victorian Britain's
transformation as a vibrant and extraordinary center of political,
technological, scientific, and intellectual advancement. Far more than
just the product of his age, Albert was one of its influencers and
architects. A composer, engineer, soldier, politician, linguist, and
bibliophile, Prince Albert, more than any other royal, was truly a
"genius." It is impossible to understand nineteenth century England
without knowing the story of this gifted visionary leader, Wilson
contends.
Albert lived only forty-two years. Yet in that time, he fathered the
royal dynasties of Germany, Russia, Spain, and Bulgaria. Through
Victoria, Albert and her German advisers pioneered the idea of the
modern constitutional monarchy. In this sweeping biography, Wilson
demonstrates that there was hardly any aspect of British national life
which Albert did not touch. When he was made Chancellor of the
University of Cambridge in his late twenties, it was considered as
purely an honorific role. But within months, Albert proposed an
extensive reorganization of university life in Britain that would
eventually be adopted, making it possible to study science, languages,
and modern history at British universities--a revolution in education
that has changed the world.
Drawn from the Royal archives, including Prince Albert's voluminous
correspondence, this brilliant and ambitious book offers fascinating
never-before-known details about the man and his time. A superb match of
biographer and subject, Prince Albert, at last, gives this important
historical figure the reverence and recognition that is long overdue.
