It is sometimes difficult for a biographer to convey adequately, even to himself, why it is that a particular individual attracts him so powerfully that the idea of writing a biography gradually germinates and then moves from the stage of general interest to actual endeavour and then to final accomplishment. My political involvements and concerns at least partly explain my biographies of Lord Randolph Churchill, Lord Rosebery, and Victor Cazalet, and my study of Sir Winston Churchill’s career between 1900 and 1939, but this new biography of Prince Albert essentially stems from many years of growing interest in a man comparable to Thomas Jefferson in the extraordinary variety and depth of his interests, who died so young and who achieved so much, but who has consistently failed to attract the serious attention of most political historians. This is all the more curious because he has received some admirable biographies, of which the first, by Sir Theodore Martin, is the most underestimated of all, but in spite of the endeavours of Sir Roger Fulford and Mr. Reginald Pound – to each of whom my debt is especially great – and my constituent and friend Mrs. Daphne Bennett, he is still inexplicably widely regarded as an enigmatic, somewhat cold, and not very significant participant in the life and reign of Queen Victoria, some of whose biographers have given him a rather minor role.
He is a man from whom contemporaries and subsequent commentators have seemed to derive much pleasure in calculatingly denigrating, and, it must be admitted, with considerable effect. The grotesque portrait presented by Lytton Strachey, with its sneers and false innuendoes – ‘owing either to his peculiar upbringing or to a more fundamental idiosyncrasy he had a marked distaste for the opposite sex’ is a notably unpleasant example – has left its mark. So, also, have the strictures of Arthur Ponsonby, who wrote in his essay on Queen Victoria in 1933 that Prince Albert ‘was not an English gentleman, he was unmistakably a German, rather professorial, shy, cold, and formal. He lacked the warmth and geniality which may often overcome adverse prejudices . . . he was a foreigner and a pedant’. While it was perhaps inevitable that there should be a reaction against the somewhat overdone memorials to ‘Albert The Good’ it is entirely wrong that such crude and inaccurate portraits of a remarkably complex character should remain unchallenged.
Indeed, so wide, and so many, were Prince Albert’s interests and abilities, packed into a very short life, that the real difficulty confronting his biographer is that of giving a fair balance to each of them. As with Jefferson, he merits a volume as architect, designer, farmer, and naturalist. His influence on English music and art appreciation is only now being fully recognised – not by the few, who have long realised it, but by a much larger audience as the result of Sir John Plumb’s and Sir Huw Wheldon’s superb Royal Heritage television programmes and book. Very few men in modern times have made such a lasting and permanent mark in such an astonishing variety of fields, from the popularisation of the Christmas Tree to the saving of Cleopatra’s Needle and its placing on the Thames Embankment; the spectacular revival of Cambridge University from medieval slumber to a world eminence it has never surrendered; the foundations of Imperial College London were his work, as are the museums in South Kensington, the carved lions at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, the extension to the National Gallery and its glorious early Renaissance paintings whose purchase he inspired and of which twenty-two are his personal gift, the idea of the Royal Balcony on the facade of Buckingham Palace, the concept of the Model Village, and the inspiration for the Victoria Cross as the highest award for gallantry in battle, to be awarded regardless of rank. It is to him that we owe the tragically destroyed Crystal Palace, the great frescoes in the Royal Gallery in the Palace of Westminster, the exact manner in which the Koh-i-Noor diamond was cut, the abolition of duelling and the final defeat of slavery. And this is not the complete list of what he did for his adopted country. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice has an absolutely literal meaning in his case. Osborne and Balmoral are better known, but represent only a small part of his artistic contribution.
Nonetheless, I have found that I cannot accept the judgement of my mentor and inspirer, Sir Roger Fulford, who, in 1947, at Barbon Manor, first introduced this then schoolboy to the wonders of Prince Albert, when he wrote of him that ‘in politics and affairs of state he did his best, but . . . not readily, and largely from a sense of duty’. Although the sense of duty, as the husband of the Queen, was indeed important, I believe that there was much more to it than that. Thus, it is the politician, whose influence upon the history of his time and on the development of the British Constitutional Monarchy is often misunderstood, and to which role he devoted by far the greatest amount of his intellect and energies, who should command the larger attention. As I have emphasised in my account, he early sought, and eventually achieved, political position of major importance – and this was not accidental. His other activities – which included the organisation of Queen Victoria’s papers in the Royal Archives, to the gratitude of the researcher – must be regarded as peripheral to his essential achievements, which were political and constitutional.
As my interest in this remarkable individual grew over the past twenty years it became obvious to me that no serious new assessment could be attempted without access to the Prince Consort’s formidably substantial archives in Queen Victoria’s papers. Although other biographers and historians since Martin have discovered and used new and important material from the Royal Archives and other sources I felt that there could be no real justification for a new venture without such access. I am profoundly grateful to Her Majesty the Queen for graciously giving me her permission to inspect and use documents in the Royal Archives at Windsor.
Inevitably, my interpretation corrects or modifies some of the judgements of my predecessors, but this study represents my honest endeavour to fulfil Edmund Gosse’s classic definition of biography as ‘the portrait of a soul in his adventures through life’.
Shortly after this project began in 1976 I was elected to Parliament for Cambridge, and it has accordingly been very formidably delayed by the substantial burdens of political life, and has often had to be set aside for the paramount concerns of my generous and staunch constituents and the work of the House of Commons. It has, therefore, taken infinitely longer to research and write than anyone had expected, and I am deeply grateful to Her Majesty the Queen, the ever-helpful Royal Librarian Sir Robin Mackworth-Young and his colleagues at Windsor, and my British and American publishers, for their patience and understanding.
The list of those to whom I am indebted for much kind assistance is very substantial, but I am especially grateful to Sir Oliver and Lady Millar, Miss Jane Langton, Mr and Mrs de Bellaigue, Miss Dimond, and Miss Cuthbert who have been unvaryingly helpful.
When I contemplate the evidence of my intense activity as a Member of Parliament for a particularly demanding marginal constituency I marvel that this biography has been written at all, but it has been a solace at times of disappointment and frustration, a source of refreshment and exhilaration when current problems have borne down heavily, and a too-often neglected companion that I shall miss.
To all who have given me so much assistance and encouragement in this lengthy enterprise, and especially to my wife and daughters, I pay my sincere thanks.
The Stone House
Great Gransden
Sandy, Bedfordshire