8. An Encounter With Death

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

'A time of awful anxiety, but still all full of hope. It was a crisis, a struggle of strength.’

So wrote Victoria in her journal for 13 December 1861, thankful that her husband Albert had passed through the worst of his mysterious illness (today it seems possible it was Crohn's Disease).

But there is no entry for 14 December, which turned out to be the worst day of her life, because Albert relapsed and died.

Victoria, perhaps the most powerful woman in the world, could not stop her husband from slipping away from her.

As everyone noticed, he hadn’t really wanted to live.

Using the account book of the royal pharmacist, this episode examines what was wrong with Albert, explores Victoria’s grief, and begins to probe how eventually she would get her confidence back and manage without him.

With the historian Helen Rappaport.

Readers: Susan Jameson and Sarah Ovens

Producer: Mark Burman

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2019.