"Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, succumbed to typhoid fever in 1861. He was forty-two and official bulletins had, until the previous day, given no cause for alarm. His death was a catastrophe for Victoria, who relied on him utterly. The Queen donned the widow's weeds that she would wear for forty years and retreated into a state of pathological grief which nobody could penetrate and few understood. Her refusal to return to public life alienated even her closest family and led to a resurgence of reppublicanism and even talk of abdication. Rappaport tracks Victoria's mission to commemorate her husband in perpetuity, planning monuments that would set their stamp on the art and culture not just of her reign but of Britain today." -- p [4] of cover.