Queen Victoria’s letters and journals brought to life in jubilee website

RARELY seen royal documents chronicling the life of Queen Victoria are featured on a new website launched today to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Victoria’s reign is brought to life through her letters and journals, and paintings and photographs of the monarch and her consort Prince Albert.

Many of the documents have been available to academics and researchers but not widely seen by the public.

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One of the highlights of the new website – called Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Scrapbook – is Victoria’s neatly written letter from June 1836 to her uncle, King Leopold I of the Belgians, describing her first impressions of Albert, whom she had met a few weeks previously.

She wrote: “He is so sensible, so kind, and so good and so amiable too. He has besides, the most pleasing and delightful exterior and appearance you can possibly see.”

Victoria is Britain’s longest reigning monarch, having come to the throne aged 18 after the death of her uncle William IV in 1837. She had nine children with Albert but never recovered from his death in 1861 and wore black for the rest of her life. She celebrated the 60th year of her reign in 1897.

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