A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted most international power and influence: her role as matchmaking grandmother
Deborah Cadbury is the author of eight acclaimed books including Chocolate Wars, The Dinosaur Hunters, The Lost King of France, The Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, for which her accompanying BBC series received a BAFTA nomination, and Princes at War. Before turning to writing full time she worked for thirty years as a BBC TV producer and executive producer and has won numerous international awards including an Emmy. She lives in London.
Wonderfully compelling and packed with new material - a gripping
story beautifully told
*Jane Ridley*
Cadbury is an adroit storyteller. Her lively, colourfully written
book, Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking, recounts the courtships and
marriages of a handful of the Queen’s grandchildren … a panoramic
family saga, its players by turns pragmatic and romantic, wilful,
dutiful, misguided and, occasionally, tragic … Cadbury writes with
verve
*Daily Telegraph*
[An] absorbing book ... The fall of the Romanovs occupies the
superb last pages of Cadbury’s book ... Dynastic mergers, we may
deduce from Deborah Cadbury’s account, offer no defence against the
whims of history. This catastrophe-laced slice of royal history
offers a ripping read
*Observer*
Engrossing … Cadbury engagingly presents [Queen Victoria] as a
mesmerising Mrs Bennet, summoning her children and then her
grandchildren to Balmoral ... The stories of [Queen Victoria’s]
descendants are mesmerising and often stranger than fiction … From
the pen of a writer of skill and style, this surprising narrative
leaves you wanting more
*The Times*
A skilfully woven account
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
Cadbury’s account of Victoria’s attempts to bend her unruly
grandchildren to her matrimonial will is the stuff of melodrama …
covered with verve and insight by Deborah Cadbury in her new
history
*Sunday Times*
An entertaining, well-written and well-conceived book … perceptive
and revealing in the light it throws on the mind and attitudes of
Victoria. Cadbury has consulted sources in numerous archives,
including the Royal Archives at Windsor, and has chosen her
quotations with skill
*Literary Review*
In this enjoyable story for fans of royal machinations, Cadbury
ably shows not just the successes, but also the damage inflicted by
Victoria's single-mindedness. An instructive European history
*Kirkus*
Impeccably researched, and written with all the brio and
understanding of a major historical novel, Princes at War takes us
intimately and even shockingly into the human dynamics of a barely
functional family at the time of our greatest peril
*Praise for 'Princes at War', David Kynaston, author of 'Austerity
Britain'*
One of the most riveting tales of the nonfiction season, rendered
with novelistic drama but deliberate detachment. The inner tensions
of the palace during wartime and the inner tensions of a remarkable
family make for one of the best, and ultimately most uplifting,
stories of the war years
*Boston Globe*
A moving and deeply researched account ... Her story is gripping,
illuminating and generous in its recognition of the central,
dramatic role of the monarchy in Britain's finest years
*Praise for 'Princes at War', William Shawcross*
Deborah Cadbury combines the family drama against the backdrop of
the war with terrific narrative verve
*The Times*
Fascinating, fresh insights into a story of four brothers
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
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