HENRY PONSONBY

Victoria's private secretary from 1870 on was a quiet, plain man who pursued a difficult course with tact and restraint, adaptation and understanding. This is a minute, but never intimate portrait of Ponnsonby and the Court, the routine of the Queen's household, life in London, Palmoral and abroad, his relationship with the Queen, who was first of all a woman, and whose severity, asperity and infallibility required finease, his contacts with her Ministers, the Queen herself, her stand on Ireland, her personal strife with the Prince of Wales, her exclusiveness and what it cost her with her people. This is a recreation drawn from profuse correspondence.