Th eyoung Victoria
This week sees the release of The Young Victoria starring Emily Blunt in the role of the formidable Queen Victoria.
The film follows the young monarch in the early years of her reign as well as looking at her relationship with Prince Albert.
But here are a string of facts that you may not know about Queen Victoria...
1. Victoria produced nine children, forty grandchildren and thirty-seven great grandchildren.
2. She was supposed to be an impartial adviser to the governments of her day, but was a Tory.
3. One of the enduring authors of the Victorian era is George Eliot (a pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans)
4. She was one of the first users of chloroform as an anaesthetic in childbirth.
5. The Victorian era cultivated the study of science and saw the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species
6. Victoria’s reign saw the world famous Jack the Ripper murders.
7.Basic State Education became free for every child under the age of 10 under her rule.
8. Brass bands and 'The Bandstand' became popular in the Victorian era.
9. Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Edward Hyde and The Invisible Man were all created under Victoria’s reign
10. She surpassed her grandfather King George III as the longest lived British monarch, reaching the age of 81 years and 243 days.
11.One of Victoria’s favourite books was The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
12. Queen Victoria publicly praised and used the fashionable 19th century cocaine-based drink Vin Mariani that later inspired Coca-Cola.
13. She died in the arms of her first grandchild, the German Emperor William II
14. She outlived eleven of her 42 grandchildren
15. Every day for forty years after Albert had died, the Queen ordered that his clothes be laid afresh on his bed in his suite at Windsor Castle
16. Edward Bulwer-Lytton is widely regarded as the worst writer of the Victorians (although he was immensely popular in his day). Bulwer-Lytton is responsible for this infamous sentence: 'it was a dark and stormy night.'
The Young Victoria is released 6th March
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