“Uncrowned King: The Life of Prince Albert”, by Stanley Weintraub

496 pages, Free Press, ISBN-13: 978-0684834863

Seine Durchlaucht Prinz Franz Albert August Karl Emanuel von Sachsen-Coburg-Saalfeld, Herzog zu Sachsen…but known better to you and me as Albert, Prince Consort, was husband to Queen Victoria and the father of her nine children – the studhorse par excellence of the Victorian Era. Oh, don’t give me that look: the guy was very good at getting his tiny and overwrought monarchical bride knocked-up and did so on a semi-regular basis, so what else am I going to call him? Now pipe down, prude, and read on: Uncrowned King: The Life of Prince Albert by Stanley Weintraub is a biography of this still-little known man. I bought this book mainly because it was written by Weintraub, whose biography of Disraeli (reviewed par moi on April 18^th, 2013; FYI) I enjoyed, for all its flaws (and I got it for cheap on the prodigious Barnes & Noble remnants pile). In Weintraub’s telling, Albert was a responsible, educated, thinking man, thrust into a situation both wonderful and intolerable (his marriage and lack of acceptance in England, respectively). Weintraub shows him as having enjoyed the one side and, through hard work and dedication, partially overcome the other (one is left to wonder, as Weintraub does, what would the monarchy be today had Albert lived as long as Victoria). On the basis of this book, it is not fair to say that Albert laid the foundation for the Pax Britannica; he did, however, through his fecundity, insight into both politics and industry, and though a great deal of hard work, aid the shaping of Europe through the First World War. Not a bad chap, over all, just an alright dude who died too soon – which is something that can be said of a great many other Victorians.