At last scholars and students of nineteenth-century British history, and those simply interested in Victorian England, have a concise but comprehensive biography of Queen Victoria, a biography that skillfully integrates her personal life with that of her historical period. Walter Arnstein, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, acknowledges that this short biography is “designed to whet rather than to sate the reader's appetite” (206), and whet it does. Arnstein is so thoroughly grounded in the life and times of Victoria that he able to do what most of the many earlier biographers of Victoria have not, to select just the right details and contextual information to flesh out, in a brief two hundred pages, the life and times of Britain's longest reigning monarch.

The main argument of this biography is that Victoria played throughout her reign an active and even crucial role in shaping British policy. Although the constitutional powers of the monarch by the nineteenth century were reduced to, in Walter Bagehot's oft-quoted words, “the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn” (204), Victoria took these rights in their broadest and most literal sense. As she told her prime minister Lord Palmerston when she left on a trip to the continent in 1863, she wanted “no step [to be] taken in foreign affairs without her previous sanction being obtained” (118). She often pressed on her ministers her own views and even took an active role in selecting these ministers, including, in 1885, the prime minister.

Victoria has been much criticized, in her day and since, for her almost complete withdrawal for many years from all public duties after the death of her husband, Prince Albert. Arnstein shows, however, that Victoria in fact remained, even in the first years of her widowhood and also in her old age, very actively involved in governmental matters. She was especially concerned about Britain's military affairs, so much that Arnstein styles her a “warrior queen” (200). Even on her deathbed in 1901, she conferred with Field Marshal Lord Roberts about the course of the Boer war and took comfort that the news from South Africa was getting better.

Although writing a biography of a woman ruling a patriarchal society, Arnstein does not analyze gender issues, nor explore the complexities of her personality. He does, however, offer fresh insight into the gendered nature of her rule, by suggesting that her ministers went along with her demands because the code of Victorian chivalry made it more difficult for them to argue with her than if she had been a man. Arnstein handles with particular skill the most sensationalized aspect of Victoria's later years, that of her relationship with her Scottish attendant, John Brown. Suggesting that there probably was not any sexual impropriety, he concludes with clearly deliberate ambiguity, saying that they had a close affectionate relationship and letting his readers form their own conclusions.

Victoria has been accused of unconstitutional actions with her sometimes strongly expressed partisan views, but Arnstein defends her by arguing the important role she played in maintaining a stable constitutional government. He points out her important role in strengthening Anglo-Irish relations, with her large personal contribution to famine relief, and even more important, to her royal visit to Ireland in 1849, which helped heal some of the wounds caused by the seeming callousness of the Liberal government to the plight of the starving Irish. Even her much-criticized long retreats to Balmoral, her palace in Scotland, were important in that few Hanoverians before her had even visited that Stuart land. Her views on foreign policy could also be valuable. In the international crisis of 1878, after the Russo-Turkish War, Arnstein suggests that through her militancy, indeed her jingoism, with her insistence that Britain strengthen its army and send a fleet to Constantinople, she played a crucial role in forcing Russia to yield most of its Turkish conquests. She was perhaps most partisan in her detestation of her multitermed prime minister William Gladstone, but, without minimizing her hostile feelings and also his frustration with her, Arnstein does quote her grudging praise of him, and he suggests that Gladstone's support of the queen and the monarchy was crucial in deflating the republican fervor in the 1870s.

A defender of Queen Victoria, Arnstein also lays out her flaws and shortcomings, mainly by simply letting her speak for herself rather than by explicitly detailing criticisms. A strength but also a weakness of this biography is the extensive use of quotes, mainly from Victoria's voluminous letters and diaries. Hearing Victoria's own words gives wonderful flavor and authenticity, but the fact that Arnstein does not analyze or probe beneath her words gives Victoria the sometimes distorted last word. Usually quoting without comment, he lets his readers interpret her words themselves. Her words could be indeed be starkly incriminating, as, for example, her often cruel put-downs of her oldest son and heir. And it is probably unnecessary to discuss her blatant selfishness. The simple statement, for example, of her refusal to spend an extra day in London by accepting Lord Salisbury's suggestion that her 1887 Diamond Jubilee parade be on Monday, so that working people could have a three-day weekend, speaks for itself.

Offering a balanced if somewhat apologetic view of the queen, Arnstein is perhaps most successful in the astonishing way he is able in this brief volume to give a clear explanation of the major events during Victoria's reign and to show how she responded to them. Arnstein has a deft touch for giving just the right explanatory material—for example, explaining the makeup of the Privy Council, the precedents for Jubilees, and Albert's German Enlightenment mentality. He is able to put so much material in this volume because he creates brief images that convey larger meanings. He describes Victoria's grandson Kaiser William II's appearance at her deathbed as “self-invited,” a short phrase with large implications. Arnstein points out that Victoria, opposed to most reforms, did support the 1896 Automotor Car Bill, removing the requirement for a horseless carriage to be preceded by a man waving a red flag, a humorous example that conveys in a few words the profound technological transformation in Victorian England. Such lively writing, careful scholarship, comprehensive scope, and fresh interpretations, all within a concise framework, suggest that Queen Victoria: A Biography will have as long a life in print as did its subject as ruler.