Really ideal for a book on this topic - gossipy and readable, informed and broad. 

 just the right amount of catty irony to get a perspective on the Victorian Era through the funhouse mirror of its eponymous ruler and those who tried to wield the levers of power around and through her. Surprisingly affecting in its portrait of her mourning and old age. 

A little light on the effects of the imperialism of this “Empress of India” - but the book’s horizons are only ever as narrow as Victoria’s herself, and other works on those subjects, like “The Scramble for Africa” are themselves illuminated by this portrait of the squabbles and housekeeping of the imperial core.