Even had Queen Victoria not presided over the achievements of the age which bears her name, her career would still hold a fascination for the historian. She was, for one thing, the solitary woman in a male political world. She was possessed of a personality at once perceptive and simple, emotional and level-headed, quotidian and imperious. And she was passionately engaged in the political life of her nation for 64 years, longer even than her most venerable ministers – to whom she was, in Gladstone’s words, ‘as the oak in the forest is to the annual harvest of the field.’ Any of the above render Victoria of interest as a political animal as well as a human being. What motivated her? What political influence did she exert? Did she act in accordance with the developing understanding of the monarch’s place in the constitution? Was she, politically speaking, a Good Queen?