Queen Victoria S Grandsons 1859 1918

Born into eight very different families, the upbringing and fortunes of Queen Victoria's grandsons varied widely. Some died in childhood, some were killed in action, and others lived to see grandchildren of their own. There were heroes and villains, valiant soldiers and dissipated youths, but their lives were interconnected through the tiny Queen for whom their welfare and happiness was a constant preoccupation. As part of a wide, extended family, they lived through the halcyon days of the late nineteenth century European monarchies, witnessing the most spectacular and the most tragic events of the age.

On 6th July 1868, when told of the birth of her seventh granddaughter, Queen Victoria remarked that the news was 'a very uninteresting thing for it seems to me to go on like the rabbits in Windsor Park.' Her apathy was understandable - this was her fourteenth grandchild, and, though she had given birth to nine children, she had never been fond of babies, viewing them as 'frog-like and rather disgusting...particularly when undressed.' The early years of her marriage had, she claimed, been ruined by frequent pregnancies; and large families were unnecessary for wealthy people since the children would grow up with nothing worthwhile to do. Nevertheless, her initial reaction to the birth of Princess Victoria of Wales belied the genuine concern that Queen Victoria felt for each of her twenty-two granddaughters. 'As a rule, ' she wrote, 'I like girls best, ' and she devoted a great deal of time to their wellbeing and happiness, showering them with an affection she had seldom shown her own children.By 1914, through a series of dynastic marriages, the Queen's granddaughters included the Empress of Russia, the Queens of Spain, Greece and Norway, and the Crown Princesses of Roumania and Sweden. As their brothers and cousins occupied the thrones of Germany, Britain and Denmark, Prince Albert's dream of a peaceful Europe created through bonds of kinship seemed a real possibility. Yet in little more than a decade after Queen Victoria's death, the Prince Consort's dream would lie shattered in the carnage of the First World War. Royal cousins and even siblings would find themselves on opposing sides; two of them would die horrifically at the hands of revolutionaries and several others would be ousted from their thrones. They had lived through the halcyon days of the European monarchies but their lives, like the lives of millions of their peoples, would be changed forever by the catastrophe played out on the battlefields of France.Through all the upheavals, tragedies and conflicts one person had bound them together and, even when wars had divided their nations, to the end of their lives, they would look back and remember 'dearest grandmama' with lov

Queen Victoria of England (1819-1901)and her husband, Prince Albert, had descendants who were involved with the thrones of most major European countries. Descendants lived in England, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Greece, Yugoslavia, The Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, France, Canada, United States, Finland, Italy, Austria, Norway, and elsewhere.

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Una Kroll was eleven when she first met her father. They stopped for lunch on the way from Brighton to London and he took her outside to play with the innkeeper's Angora rabbit. In that pub garden this stranger uttered words that sent a chill through her heart, he would not be coming home. There was another woman. Scarcely comprehending, she buried her face in the white rabbit's fur and refused to cry. The lonely little girl already knew how to hide her tears and she had invented a childish fantasy about her absent father to fend off unsympathetic classmates. He was an aviator and explorer who had gone missing in the desert, she told them. This was less extraordinary than the truth. Only years later did she discover that George Hill, her father, was a British spy who had befriended Trotsky at the time of the Russian Revolution. He had smuggled the Romanian crown jewels out of the Soviet Union and was involved in a doomed attempt to rescue the Tsar. During the Second World War he acted as the link between Churchill's Special Operations Executive and Stalin's secret service, the NKVD. Una's mother, Hilda Pediani, had been one of his agents and one of many lovers. He married her so that Una would be legitimate, but took no part in the child's upbringing. It was a rare sympathetic act by a man who was capable of great bravery but little compassion.

The United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, most commonly known as MI5, was founded in 1909 by Sir Vernon Kell KBE. Kell ('K' within the agency) not only founded MI5 but was also its Director for 31 years, the longest tenure of any head of a British government department during the twentieth century. Kell was also fluent in six foreign languages, making him arguably the most gifted linguist ever to head a Western intelligence agency. A Secret Well Kept was written by Kell's wife, Constance, in the 1950s, and the manuscript has been a treasured family possession ever since. Constance's story is endlessly fascinating: she tells of their life in China during the Boxer Rebellion, the formation of MI5 in 1909, the key characters, events and spy cases of Kell's career, and his important work achieved for the country during two world wars. A modern-day preface from Kell's great-granddaughter, introduction by Stewart Binns and notes from Dr Chris Northcott add historical context to this delightful and unparalleled insight into the personal life of an extremely powerful and important man.

Queen Victoria and Albert, Prince Consort had nine children who despite their very different characters, remained a close-knit family. Inevitably, as they married into European royal families their loyalties were divided and their lives dominated by political controversy. This is not only the story of their lives in terms of world impact, but also of their own personal achievements, their individual contributions to public life in Britain and overseas and in their roles as the children of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort.