In an age when we are all used to seeing paparazzi photos of Prince Harry staggering out of Boujis with a blonde girlfriend, the time when the House of Windsor was regarded as the model family, its members paragons of sanity and virtue, seems like ancient history. Yet even during the days when people instinctively stood for the national anthem in concert halls and cinemas, the Firm had its secrets. Never mind the Merry Monarch and the dissolute Prince Regent: the story of the royal family since Victoria presents a glorious spectacle of madness, badness and sheer disgrace.
Queen Victoria’s own morals were conservative, so rumours of a romance with her Scottish manservant, John Brown, after the death of her beloved Albert in 1861, were probably inflated. Her offspring, however, showed rather less self-control. Of Victoria’s nine children, her favourite was probably Beatrice, the youngest, towards whom she harboured an affection that bordered on the pathological. When Beatrice announced her engagement in 1884, Victoria was so incensed that she refused to speak to her daughter for seven months.
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