VICTORIA AND ALBERT

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25737, 24 February 1949, Page 5

VICTORIA AND ALBERT

NEW BOOK BY HECTOR BOLITHO

(Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, February 23. The New Zealand author Hector Bolitho has published a new book on the British Royal Family, dealing with the reign of Queen Victoria. The book includes a number of hitherto unpublished letters written by the Prince Consort before his marriage to Victoria. They show that Albert was under no illusions about the character of his future wife. “Victoria,” he wrote in one of the letters, “is said to be incredibly stubborn, and her extreme obstinacy to be at war with her good nature. She delights in court ceremonies, etiquette, and trivial formalities.”

Another letter describes how the Prince Consort had a tussle over precedence with his uncle, the King of Hanover (formerly the Duke of Cumberland) and dodged round the table after a Royal dinner party in order to sign the register first. "Then we let him go,” he wrote, referring to his uncle, “and happily he fell over some stones at Kew and damaged his ribs.”

According to the book the Prince Consort in the last years of his life was an unhappy man overwhelmed by his sense of responsibility and greatly vexed by the unwillingness with which his eldest son, later King Edward, submitted himself to the rigid pattern of education and training his father had laid down for him. On one occasion Albert laments that Edward, while visiting Egypt, preferred reading “East Lynne” to visiting the Pyramids. Dean Stanley, who was Prince Edward’s mentor on that occasion, recorded that the Prince treated ancient monuments that bored him “with the most well-bred courtesy, as if he were paying a visit to a high personage.”

Canadian Team for Empire* Games. —lt is expected that a team of up to 70 will be sent from Canada to the 1950 Empire Games in AucklandMontreal, February 22.