Victoria: A Royal Childhood

Charming exhibition at Kensington Palace looking at Queen Victoria’s life before she became Queen.

Later in her life Victoria created a myth around her unhappy childhood but this exhibition shows that she had had a happy, privileged though restricted start in life which lead to her being very strong willed. It talked about the race between George IV’s brothers to produce an heir on the death of George’s daughter Charlotte and how Victoria’s mother and her companion John Conroy introduced the Kensington rules to protect and control her.

I hadn’t know before that her mother and Conroy took her on a tour of the country and the show included the travel bed she had used. It was lovely to see her handwriting exercise books as well as delightful drawings she did of plays and ballets she had seen.

The story was told using wonderful objects from the Royal Collection and charming small figurines which appeared around the show of Victoria, her governess Lehzen, her dog Dash and Conroy and her mother. These were used beautifully on the top of candelabra to represent her birthday ball and in the last room (shown here) where they recreated her first meeting with the Privy Council on becoming Queen which happened in that room.

Review
Evening Standard


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