Victoria Revealed: 500 facts about the Queen and her World

by Kensington Palace

Genres: History

152 pages, Paperback

Reviews

[Leslie Goddard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing. I like the snappy, internet-list-like concept of a book that captures Victoria’s life and times in easy-to-consume snippets. But too many of the facts were of minor interest (ten statues of Victoria around the world, ten things named for her), and too many were lists of people and places I couldn’t keep track of easily (ten novels, ten famous artists, ten seaside resorts). Why the weird decision to choose “ten” for everything?

I did enjoy some of this book. I loved the illustrations, especially the nicely detailed photographs of artifacts from Victoria’s life. Slightly larger book size, to accommodate larger images (and captions in larger type) would have been nice.

There’s a lot of potential here for a fun, engaging book about Victoria suitable for those who want to know about her but aren’t interested in a full-length biography. But while the portions of the book about Victoria are engaging, the odd organization made seeing progression over time very difficult (for example, various family deaths are clumped together under “Victoria’s sorrows” making it really hard to envision the chronology. Her funeral is described before you get to the descriptions of her ten staff members like her childhood governess Baroness Lehzen.) The organization didn’t work for me

[Vika · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.6 stars