Quotes from Gillian Gill

education could certainly "mould and direct" but could not "alter a child's character.

The long, faithful, loving partnership of Victoria and Albert has come to be a dusty old fact enshrined in the history books, but as a lived reality, it was an extraordinary feat achieved against the odds.

But Palmerston feared that a new, unified Germany at the heart of Europe would alter the balance of power and threaten English interests as a free Hungary or a republican Spain could not.

The Kingdom of Prussia was aiming to be the kernel around which the new Germany would form, and Prussia was openly hostile to Britain and its constitutional form of government. Prussia was a repressive, militaristic society ruled by a medievally minded king and a tiny, ultraconservative camarilla. The Prussians saw Russia as their governmental ideal and chief ally. Palmerston did not like the Prussians.

In view of the consistently violent aggression of the German Empire between 1860 and 1918, Palmerston's prescience is remarkable.

But on certain key issues, like Germany, he saw things clearly, as the prince did not.

She was short, she was plain, and she showed signs of wanting her own way. Disappointed

Palmerston, like Winston Churchill in the mid-twentieth century, seemed the incarnation of John Bull, the English equivalent to Uncle Sam.

Her family had long had a sense of history and understood that what was not written down might almost not have existed. The Stephens and Pattles...understood the value of old pieces of paper covered in handwriting.

But Albert's overriding international mission was the reunification of Germany under Prussia, so he did not come to the defense of little Denmark when Prussia made moves to swallow up the Danish duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.