Author & Speaker
Queen Victoria Series
THE QUEEN VICTORIA SERIES
Susan has written 5 books in the Queen Victoria series. Queen Victoria is the British monarch in history whose name everyone knows. Susan Symon’s three books focus on Victoria as a woman – her personal life, events that formed her resolute character, and relationships that were important to her. They are beautifully illustrated throughout with portraits and memorabilia from the author’s collection and use some of Victoria’s own words, from her letters and journal, to help tell the story.
Victoria's Daughters is the latest in the Queen Victoria series.
Young Victoria
This book about the young Queen Victoria is beautifully illustrated throughout with portraits and other memorabilia from the author’s collection. It covers the somewhat bizarre circumstances of Victoria’s birth, when there was an undignified race to produce the next heir to the British throne; her lonely childhood under a tough regime and without any friends of her own age; and the national adulation when she succeeded as a teenager. It ends with how she fell in love with Albert. ‘Young Victoria’ focuses on the story of Victoria as a woman – her personal life, the events that formed her character, and the relationships that were important to her. It uses some of her own words from her journal, to help tell the story. This short book is intended to be light-hearted and easy-to-read and should appeal to anyone who likes history, or follows royalty, or is interested in people’s personal stories. The overwhelming public image of Queen Victoria is of the elderly queen towards the end of her reign. She is serious and unsmiling, even gloomy; more of a symbol than a person. But Victoria has a colourful life story which is full of drama, intrigue and surprises. She came to the throne as a pretty eighteen-year-old; her public image was very different at the start of her reign than at the end. ‘Young Victoria’ is the first part of ‘The Colourful Personal Life of Queen Victoria’. It will be followed by two more books – ‘Victoria and Albert’, covering her marriage to and relationship with Albert, when they changed the image of the royal family and founded a dynasty; and ‘The Widowed Queen’, about the long years of her widowhood after Albert’s early death, when she became the doyenne of sovereigns and the grandmamma of Europe.
Victoria &Albert
This book about the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert tells the story of one of the most famous relationships in history. Their marriage was by no means a grand match for Victoria and was very unpopular with the British public. There were early troubles for the couple with power struggles, personality clashes, and unwelcome pregnancies; but they created a true partnership, a happy family life, and founded a dynasty. The book ends with Albert’s early death, and how a man in the prime of life was worn out with the stresses and strains of being Victoria’s husband. Victoria was pregnant for a third of her married life, and the book looks at how she dealt with pregnancy, childbirth, and being a mother. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were married at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace in London, on 10 February 1840, when they were both twenty years old. For her, their marriage followed a whirlwind romance and Albert would be a life-long passion. For him, it was a successful outcome of long-laid plans – marrying Victoria was his career. They were in an unusual position for their time, because it was Victoria who was the sovereign and Albert had a supporting role. Their marriage would succeed, but stormy waters lay ahead. ‘Victoria and Albert’ uses some of Victoria’s own words from her journal and letters to help tell the story and is beautifully illustrated throughout with portraits and other memorabilia from the author’s collection. This short book is intended to be light-hearted and easy-to-read and should appeal to anyone who likes history, or follows royalty, or is interested in people’s personal stories. ‘Victoria and Albert’ is the second of three books about ‘The Colourful Personal Life of Queen Victoria’. They focus on the story of Victoria as a woman – her personal life, the events that formed her character, and the relationships that were important to her. The first book, ‘Young Victoria’, looked at her early years, including her difficult childhood and how she came to the throne aged only eighteen. The third book, ‘The Widowed Queen’, will cover the long years of her widowhood after Albert’s early death, as the doyenne of sovereigns and grandmamma of Europe.
Victoria the Widowed Queen
The marriage of Victoria and Albert is one of the most famous relationships in history. But Albert died in middle age and Victoria spent twice as long as his widow than as his wife. This book is about Victoria’s widowhood when she became the longest serving European sovereign and the matriarch of a huge clan. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout with portraits from the author’s collection and uses some of Victoria’s own words from her journal and letters to help tell the story.
The first years of Victoria’s widowhood were the least successful of her reign. She refused to appear in public and her popularity suffered. She gradually emerged from self-imposed gloom but her seclusion in remote homes, far from London, fuelled scandalous rumours about her private life. The story of Victoria’s widowhood includes the men in her life. At only forty-two, the queen was a desirable catch but never considered another foray into the royal marriage market. She formed a close relationship with a male servant, flirted with her prime minister, and became very fond of a handsome son-in-law. Late in life she had a puzzling relationship with an Indian young man. By the end of her reign, Victoria was an institution and the icon of the age; the symbol of Britain’s superpower status and monarch of two hundred million subjects in an empire that stretched around the globe. She is the British monarch in history whose name everyone knows.
Victoria the Widowed Queen is the third book about The Colourful Personal Life of Queen Victoria. They focus on Victoria as a woman – her personal life, the events that formed her character, and the relationships that were important to her. Young Victoria covers her early years including the difficult childhood that formed her character and how she came to the throne aged only eighteen. Victoria & Albert looks at her marriage to Albert and how she balanced the very different roles of sovereign and Victorian wife and mother.
Victoria's Daughters
The Colourful Personal Lives of Queen Victoria's Five daughters
Queen Victoria’s five daughters were born into a world of privilege and deference, cocooned by their high rank and wealth. But their lives were fractured by the early death of their father, Prince Albert, and then dominated by the selfish demands of their controlling mother. Victoria’s daughters were important public figures in their own time but are largely forgotten today. This book explores their personal stories, tinged with drama, tragedy, and scandal. Illustrated throughout with portraits from the author’s collection, the book uses some of Victoria’s own words from her letters and her journal to help tell their stories.
Victoria had qualities that made her a great queen, but she was not at her best as a mother. It was a tragedy for her daughters that their father died so young; at the age of only forty-two. After his death Victoria became a stern and distant figure, and her daughters were always in awe of her even when they were grown up. They were never allowed to forget Victoria was their sovereign as well as their mother and her wishes should be obeyed.
This is the fourth book in a series on The Colourful Personal Life of Queen Victoria. The first three books focus on the different phases of Victoria’s life. This book takes on the story through the lives of her five daughters. It tells of the bitter frustration of the eldest daughter as her life’s ambition crumbles to ashes; the heroic death of the second in a deadly epidemic of disease; the battle of the third with ill health and drug dependency; the rumoured illegitimate baby of the fourth; and the determination of the youngest not to bend to her mother’s will but to marry the man she loved.
Queen Victoria in Cornwall
The Royal Visit to Cornwall in 1846
In September 1846, the royal yacht Victoria and Albert steamed into the harbour at Falmouth in Cornwall flying the royal standard. On board were Queen Victoria, her husband Prince Albert, and their two eldest children – five-year-old Vicky (Victoria, princess royal) and four-year-old Bertie (Albert Edward, prince of Wales). The guns at Pendennis Castle on the headland roared a welcome and the Falmouth waters were alive with boats packed with cheering spectators to greet the queen and her heir. Their arrival was part of the royal visit to Cornwall when Victoria came ashore to see the sights, meet the local aristocracy in their great houses, and patronise local industries.
Queen Victoria in Cornwall is an account of Victoria’s visit and follows in her footsteps to revisit the sights she saw and explore their royal history. The queen went to Cotehele House near Saltash, preserved Tudor mansion of the royal courtier Lord Mount Edgcumbe; toured the spectacularly scenic island castle of St Michael’s Mount near Penzance; and watched a fishing net being drawn beneath Pendennis Castle at Falmouth, grim last stand of the Cornish royalist army of King Charles I. At Restormel Castle near Lostwithiel she descended to the working face of an iron mine in a mine wagon lined with straw; and at Place House in Fowey met the industrialist who was known as The King of Mid-Cornwall. Albert’s visit to the serpentine rock works at Penzance gave a boost to this Cornish industry that flourished during Victoria’s reign.
In September 1846, Queen Victoria was twenty-seven years old and had been married to Prince Albert for six years. There was huge public interest in her young son and four-year-old Bertie was roundly cheered whenever he appeared. As the eldest son of the sovereign Bertie was the duke of Cornwall from birth and the first duke to visit Cornwall for two hundred years.
Victoria was a keen observer and her comments about the terrifying narrow Cornish lanes, perpendicular hills, and strange-sounding Cornish people still resonate today. She wrote in her journal that the Cornish ‘are a very talkative race, and speak a sort of English, hardly to be understood.’
With colour illustrations, sketch maps, and family trees, Queen Victoria in Cornwall should appeal to those who like history, or follow royalty, or enjoy sightseeing in Cornwall.