New exhibition marks bicentenary of the birth of Queen Victoria

A major new exhibition at Queen Victoria’s childhood home at London’s Kensington Palace will mark the 200th anniversary of her birth on May 24, 1819.

Among the items on show will be a scrapbook of mementos created by Victoria’s German governess, Baroness Lehzen, displayed in public for the first time. Rare surviving pieces of Victoria’s clothing, including a simple cotton petticoat from around the time of her marriage and a fashionable pair of silver boots, will also be on show.

As the only daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of King George III, Victoria had little expectation of becoming Queen. But her father died shortly after her birth and three uncles ahead of her in the succession had no surviving legitimate children. When her uncle William IV died in 1837, she became Queen at the age of 18.

In 1940 she married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg Gotha, with whom she had nine children. Together Victoria and Albert are associated with Britain’s great age of industrial expansion, economic progress and rapidly expanding empire. Albert took an active interest in the arts, science, trade and industry, and encouraged his wife to do likewise. Victoria was the first reigning monarch to travel by train, making her first train journey in 1842.

Victoria was devoted to her husband and was distraught when he died, aged 42, in 1861. For the rest of her reign she wore black.

Victoria died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, on January 22, 1901, after a reign which lasted almost 64 years, the longest in British history until Queen Elizabeth II overtook her record in 2015.