The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hesse : The curious destinies of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters – 9781780726298

THE TIMES BOOK OF THE WEEKNamed one of The Telegraph’s ‘Best Biographies of the Year 2024’Queen Victoria had forty-two grandchildren but the four Princesses of Hesse were held in her particular favour. After the sudden death of her daughter Alice, Queen Victoria took an obsessive interest in the marriage prospects of the four girls their mother had left behind, hoping this might secure for them a happy future. And each of the young women did indeed marry into a European dynasty: the Romanovs and the Hohenzollerns of Germany.

However no one could have foreseen how the maelstrom of the twentieth century would bring tragedy and heartache to each one of them in turn. Drawing on hundreds of previously unseen letters from the sisters as well as from their grandmother Queen Victoria, The Princesses of Hesse takes us on a sweeping journey across the tumultuous landscape of the turn of the century – from the dramas of the Russian Court to the Russian Revolution, and through both World Wars in which the sisters often found themselves on opposing sides. Both intimate and epic in scope, Frances Welch’s biography sheds new light on the four sisters’ lives, illuminating a remarkable period of history in the process.

‘full of passions, royal peculiarities and misspelt letters…compellingly told’ Christopher Howse, The Daily Telegraph’Welch does a wonderful job of marshalling the different strands of this story, drawing on the sisters’ chatty, gossipy correspondence, some of which has never been published. It grips you until the very last page’ The Mail on Sunday ‘Frances Welch’s elegant and intimate group biography returns us to the start of the 20th century, when Queen Victoria’s favourite grand-daughters were scattered between Germany, England and Russia’ Frances Wilson, The Daily Telegraph’eye-opening’ and ‘harrowing’ The Daily Mail’Welch brings the four princesses vividly to life’ and ‘will delight those who enjoy reading about the lives of royals’ The Times ‘brings them vividly to life…a tonic…a gripping read’ Hugo Vickers, The Oldie’Frances Welch has a gift for bringing royal figures to life, making us care about them and showing us how their stories interweave…this is both a deeply affecting story of four sisters and an informative bit of history’ Ysenda Maxtone Graham, The Spectator’splendid’, ‘a fascinating family portrait’, ‘Welch creates a tenderly intimate portrait of the last, doomed Tsarina and her three German-born sisters’ Miranda Seymour, Literary Review’excellent, fascinating’ Jane Ridley, Times Literary Supplement