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Queen Victoria's Matchmaking
The Royal Marriages that Shaped Europe
A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted the most international power and influence: as a matchmaking grandmother.
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Reader Reviews
Praise
Wonderfully compelling and
packed with new material - a gripping story beautifully told.—Jane Ridley
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 that
effectively shows 'the influence of [Victoria's] matchmaking on the remarkable
rise of the royal dynasty'.—Kirkus Reviews
[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.—Miranda Seymour, The 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.—Paula Byrne, The Times
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.—Daisy Goodwin, The Sunday Times
Deborah Cadbury is an
adroit story teller. Her lively colourfully written book...begins in the 1880s
and ends in the toppling thrones of the First World War, a panoramic family
saga, its players by turns pragmatic and romantic, wilful, dutiful, misguided
and, occasionally tragic—Matthew Dennison, The Daily Telegraph
"A rich history of Queen Victoria's canny use of political power."—Bookpage
"Ms. Cadbury stresses the human element of her story, not least the wayward personalities and unforeseen family rivalries that thwarted Victoria's designs as a monarch and matriarch... Many vivid pen portraits."—William Anthony Hay, Wall Street Journal
"Fantastic...In lively and page-turning prose, author Deborah "Chocolate Wars" Cadbury confirms her place as a leading historian of Britain as she pulls Queen Victoria out of caricature and into our hearts."—Randy Dotinga, Christian Science Monitor
—Kelly Faircloth, Pictorial
