NEWS & EVENTS
Forthcoming Books
Memorial: The Death of Prince Albert
UK: Hutchinson, Autumn 2011 US: St Martin’s Press TBA
When Albert of Saxe Coburg, prince consort and husband of Queen Victoria died at 10.50 pm. on the night of 14 December 1861 at the age of only 42, the bells began tolling soon after at St Paul’s Cathedral. The whole nation woke up the next morning to this mournful sound, as the message was relayed from village to village and city to city across the country’s churches. The queen and her nation were plunged into a state of grief so profound that this one untimely death would dramatically alter the shape of the British monarchy for the rest of the queen’s reign.
Britain had not just lost a prince, it had in effect lost a king, for Albert had performed that function in all but name for many years, with his wife increasingly deferring to him on matters of state. Victoria’s mourning for her lost husband became so protracted, so fetishistic, that its like had never before been seen.
It brought in its wake an enormous cult of mourning in Britain, centred around the queen and the iconization of Prince Albert – forever young and heroic, eternally handsome.
Caroline Gascoigne says: ‘I’m thrilled to have acquired this book. Helen is rapidly establishing herself as one of our most persuasive narrative historians. Memorial will be packed with telling detail and a must-read for anyone interested in Victorian Britain.’
Writer • Historian • Russianist
HELEN