From the desk of Roland Rocchiccioli – June 27, 2019

Queen Victoria must have been quite a woman! Alexandrina Victoria was born in 1819. Two-hundred years later people still talk about her is if it were yesterday.

I FIRST encountered the Grandmother of Europe when I was child in the goldfields of Western Australia. The house we lived-in was owned by Grinning Joe. My mother, Beria, gave him that moniker. He had a shiny bald head and a huge moonface. He was always smiling. On her first sighting she said, “Oh God, will you have a look at him. It’s Grinning Joe!” And it stuck. I thought it was his name, “Hello Mr. Grinning Joe,” I would say when I saw him in the street.

The house was typical of the town: four rooms, jarrah floors – which were polished with Fisher’s Wax to parade ground standard; pressed tin ceilings, and a front and back verandah – one end of which was the bathroom. I used to lie in bed, staring-up and wondering about the woman on the ceiling wearing a crown. “Who was she – and why was she there”, I wondered? Now, I know. It was Queen Victoria. Sadly, the house and the tin are gone, swallowed-up by a huge open-cut gold mine. I have never seen the design again, anywhere; nor can I find a photograph. My fascination with the great Queen has never diminished. I have a large, framed, coloured print of her which hangs in the hall. Dressed in her widow’s weeds, and clutching a black lace fan, with rings on her fingers, and a rivière of diamonds around her neck, and one at each ear, she stares, regally, into the distance.

Victoria came to the throne by accident. Her four uncles died without issue which left her next in line.

She was 18 when the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain came with the news of accession. When her controlling mother, the Duchess of Kent, tried to intercept the meeting, they said, “Madam, our business is with the Queen of England.” Victoria wrote in her diary, “I was awoke at six o’clock by Mamma, who told me the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room (only in my dressing gown) and alone, and saw them. Lord Conyngham then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 minutes past two this morning, and consequently that I am Queen.”

Queen Victoria, Empress of India, died in 1901, having ruled for 63 years and seven months. Under her, Britain had become the most powerful nation in the world. She ruled over a quarter of the world mass. It was an Empire on which the sun never set. For my generation, and the 50 years after her demise, the Empire was all the countries coloured pink the on the classroom world map.

The Victoria Cross was introduced by Queen Victoria to honour acts of great bravery during the Crimean War.

It is still the highest accolade of bravery in the Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Under pressure, Victoria was given to fits of pique. When it was suggested she should come-out of her self-imposed mourning and show herself to the Nation, she threatened to pack-up her children and move to Australia!

According to her grand-daughter, Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, who adored her granny, Queen Victoria did not say the famous line, “We are not amused!” Recently, archival silent film has been restored and it shows Her Majesty smiling, broadly. Queen Victoria no longer holds the record as the Nation’s longest reigning monarch. Her great great granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, came to the throne in February 1952, and has now being reigning for 67 years and four months.

Roland can be heard every Monday morning – 10.30 – on radio 3BA and contacted via [email protected].