Some of you may remember a story I shared a few weeks ago regarding a Q&A with one of my favourite biographers, Matthew Dennison. After much planning, it’s finally here! Join me in today’s blog as Matthew Dennison answers your questions!
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1. When did you begin writing and how did you begin your career?
I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was five and I always wrote. Between the ages of 13 and 21, I wrote a novel a year, usually during the summer holidays and long university vacations. With hindsight, I think of this as a sort of apprenticeship – or like a sportsman’s training. None of these novels was published, though I had a literary agent while I was at university, but writing so much – around half a million words – was obviously good practice, despite my eventual decision to write nonfiction. When I wanted to write my first book, The Last Princess, I contacted my editor direct, as he was well-known for his interest in royal subjects. He was Ion Trewin of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, one of the great editors of his day, and The Last Princess became one of the last books on which he worked before his death.
2. What made you want to write a biography about Princess Beatrice?
In the early Noughties read a book by John Matson, written twenty years earlier, called Dear Osborne, about Queen Victoria’s family life at Osborne House. I felt there was an untold story here about the Queen’s youngest daughter, Beatrice. Hamish Hamilton found for me a copy of David Duff’s 1950s biography of Beatrice – at that point, the most recent account of her life – and I quickly became obsessed. I hugely enjoyed every aspect of that book, visiting local archives offices across Britain, tracking down letters in German princely archives, working in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, looking at portraits, portraits, portraits.
3. What do you think Princess Beatrice’s relationship was like with Queen Victoria behind closed doors? Do you think she resented Queen Victoria for holding her back?
I have no sense that Beatrice ultimately resented her mother. Certainly there were tensions during the very difficult period that followed Beatrice’s announcement that she wanted to get married, but in the long run her relationship with her mother was the strongest and most enduring of her life. Her children, for example, always felt that she was the Queen’s daughter first, their mother second – though in her undemonstrative way Beatrice was a devoted and very proud mother.
4. Do you think Beatrice’s life would have been different if Prince Albert hadn’t died when she was so young? If so, how?
Prince Albert’s death, when Beatrice was four-and-a-half, undoubtedly changed her life. Sunshine gave way to shadows. Gone was the high-spiritedness that had characterised aspects of the upbringing of Beatrice’s older siblings, the Swiss Cottage at Osborne, birthday tableaux, family concerts. Beatrice grew up in a sotto voce atmosphere, dominated by the Queen’s grief.
5. What’s the most interesting fact you’ve discovered about Queen Victoria and/or her family?
I’ve written biographies of Queen Victoria and her daughter Beatrice and have written extensively on the Royal Family in the nineteenth century, and, of course, for a writer, discoveries fall into different categories. I love the sort of picturesque details that humanise the past, and those facts or statements or revelations that seem to illuminate a person or an event, a kind of eureka moment. I’ve always loved Queen Victoria’s vehemence and her intermittent lack of moderation, her immoderate and very vehemently expressed dislike, for example, for ripe apples, closed windows, Russians, bishops, feminists and, from time to time, a shifting selection of her children. I like little telling details, for example, Prince Albert’s instructions to Winterhalter about painting bright blue skies in his portraits of the royal children – to suggest the sunniness and happiness that were Albert’s aims for his children, but which certainly weren’t always the reality.
6. Who is your favourite historical figure?
I have a handful of favourite historical figures, including Queen Victoria, Louis XVI, the Empress Eugenie, Chaucer, St Cuthbert and Beatrix Potter.
7. Which biography has been your favourite to research and write?
I have a sentimental attachment to The Last Princess because it was my first book and lots of other firsts: my first title to become a bestseller, my first book to be published in the States, my first book to be serialised. I feel a real attachment to Beatrice herself. And I loved some of the previously unseen material I found in the process of researching this book.
8. What kind resources do you use for your research?
I’m sure I work much as other biographers, though I always make extensive use of visual source material and material evidence – portraits, pieces of clothing, etc
9. Are you currently working on any new books?
Yes, I’m writing a book about aspects of the Bloomsbury Group.
10. How long on average does it take you to complete a book from beginning to end?
Research can take as long as one’s publisher gives one, plus a bit! I tend to write very quickly. ‘The Last Princess’ took eleven weeks to write, my biography of Queen Victoria six-and-a-half weeks, once all the research was done.
11. What advice would you give to aspiring authors/biographers?
Do it! But always, always, always research and write with integrity, and remember that telling the story of a life in book form is more than fact gathering. English prose can be wonderfully beautiful – or not… – and stories can always be told in more than one way.
Thank you to everyone that has read today’s Q&A and of course, a huge thank you to Matthew Dennison for agreeing to take part. Follow Matthew on instagram for updates on his upcoming projects as well as historical information.
©️ Queen.Victoria.Roses 2024
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Thank you for this. I now have new books to read and am following Matthew on Instagram.