7. A Nightingale at Balmoral

Lucy Worsley continues her exploration of Queen Victoria's reign through significant encounters.

Miss Florence Nightingale and her nurses had put the British Army to shame with their exposure, in Crimea, of the shockingly poor medical treatment given to the soldier.

Florence became a celebrity, and Queen Victoria was a huge fan, admiring Miss Nightingale’s modesty and her apparently tender care for her men.

In reality, Florence was an ambitious, tenacious and entirely un-Victorian woman, who had the trick of maintaining the self-effacing manner that powerful men would respect.

In 1856, Florence accepted an invitation to Balmoral, not because she admired the Queen, but because she wanted to argue the case for medical reform.

At Balmoral, the cool veteran of Crimea found Victoria shallow: 'the least self-reliant person’ she’d ever known.

Florence also thought that the Queen, pregnant for the ninth time, was too fond of dancing at the whiskey-fuelled Balmoral balls.

During their time together in the pseudo-Scottish fantasy land of Balmoral, no one had a very good time, and each of the two very different women failed to understand each other.

With the historian Mark Bostridge.

Readers: Susan Jameson and Sarah Ovens

Producer: Mark Burman

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2019.