Prince Albert

March 1, 2019

An award-winning biographer as well as a novelist whose Leo Tolstoy won Whitbread honors, Wilson has assayed subjects from Queen Victoria to Hitler to Jesus. Here he pulls Queen Victoria's husband out of her shadow and argues for his transformative contributions in political, technological, scientific, and intellectual advancement. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

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May 15, 2019
An excellent life of Queen Victoria's beloved husband, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819-1861), who turned the powerless office of Prince Consort into a major force for good. Most historians have given Albert high marks. Prolific novelist and biographer Wilson (Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker, 2017, etc.) makes a convincing case that he exerted a major influence on the modernizing of Britain's society and restoring of the crown's prestige. Victoria's mother was sister to Albert's father; both were aristocrats from principalities that supplied spouses to the British royal family for more than a century, and Albert was the leader in a thin field of eligible royal males. Historians continue to express wonder at the passionate love Victoria felt after a formal visit in 1839, a love that never diminished during two decades of marriage. Although Britain's royal dynasty descended from the German, George I, who arrived in 1714, foreigners were unpopular. The press did not celebrate the marriage, and Parliament voted to reduce his annuity and opposed his ennoblement. Despite her love, Victoria was not inclined to give up her considerable, if mostly ceremonial, power. Overcoming his frustration, Albert skillfully reorganized the royal household and impressed Britain's leaders with his good sense. Helped by Victoria's preoccupation with nine pregnancies, he shared her responsibilities and increased the monarchy's influence by emphasizing its lack of partisanship (the young Victoria hated the Tories). Liberal by upper-class standards, he enthusiastically supported the technological, political, and commercial views of the rising middle class, which transformed Victorian Britain into "the most prosperous and peaceful country in modern Europe--arguably the richest country in history." Everyone cheered his central role in organizing the Great Exhibition of 1851, and by the time of his premature death, he was an almost universally admired figure. As usual, Wilson delineates his subject's life with aplomb. A delightfully vivid, opinionated biography that pays almost equal attention to Albert's wife and a colorful supporting cast of early Victorian notables.

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June 17, 2019
This lively, delicious portrait of Prince Albert (1819–1861) by distinguished biographer Wilson (Victoria) shows how much the United Kingdom owes to Queen Victoria’s adored consort (and cousin). While it took some convincing before the teenage queen fell for her German suitor, who struggled with English, they tied the knot and welcomed their first daughter in 1840, and Victoria’s feelings only grew from there. Drawing on new material released by the current monarch, the book delves liberally into private letters and diaries that reveal Victoria as a “besotted wife” with “passionate and uncontrolled” feelings that contrasted with Albert’s “more dutiful” ones. Well-educated by royal standards, Albert was intent on creating a legacy and making education available to his new countrymen. He spearheaded the Great Exhibition of 1851, a world’s fair that put the Industrial Revolution on display for all to enjoy; served as Chancellor of Cambridge; catalogued the works of Raphael; designed Osborne House; and fathered a brood of nine who were destined to rule Europe into the 20th century. Wilson’s Albert is a man whose “upper lip was seldom stiff,” who fretted about his hairline, and who was, unusually for royal fathers of the time, preoccupied with the details of his children’s upbringing. Anglophiles will relish the inside story of this royal personage. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Associates.

July 1, 2019
To serve as a companion volume to his well-executed Victoria: A Life (2014), popular historian Wilson presents a magnificently understanding biography of Victoria's spouse, her German-born consort, Prince Albert (also the queen's first cousin). Albert led a brief life?dying at age 42?but his impact on his adopted homeland, Great Britain, especially on the functioning of the monarchy, was immense, hence the subtitle of this wise new portrait. That is the thesis Wilson develops, comfortably resting his narrative on two legs: complete thoroughness and joyful buoyancy. As consort, Albert struggled against the prejudice he encountered as a foreigner who most people thought exerted too much influence on their temperamental little queen (short in stature as she was). With his great intelligence and level-headedness (in contrast to the mercurial Victoria), Albert endured a lot of personal affront at the hands of his difficult wife; but Wilson judges the prince as a great public figure, especially as a major contributor to the evolution of the monarchy into the constitutionally based institution that remains securely in place to this day.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)