Victoria: A Royal Love Story

Throughout history, the Kings and Queens of Britain

have collected great works of art.

For pleasure...

For show...for prestige.

But Queen Victoria and Prince Albert created a collection unlike any other,

intimate and deeply personal, a collection that reflects

their life together and their love for each other.

They built houses and palaces

in which they could live out a grand version of domestic bliss.

They filled them with tokens of their love.

And love for their children.

Even their animals.

And reflecting all the splendour of royal life.

Together they built a collection

bursting with the traditional, the regal and the unexpected.

A new exhibition at the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace

puts many of Victoria and Albert's gifts to each other on public view for the first time.

Some are dazzling.

Some surprisingly sexy.

Some distinctly odd.

A lot of the collection helps to indicate

the history of that whole period.

That why, I think, an art collection is so fascinating

because it helps to freeze moments in time.

From its romantic beginning to its tragic end,

the love between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert is one of history's great royal love stories.

Victoria may have been small and rather plain, but she had a passionate nature.

She was strong-willed and when she'd set her heart on something, she had to have it.

And she'd set her heart on Albert, her first cousin, whom she met when she was just 17.

"He is so excessively handsome", she said.

"Such beautiful eyes, an exquisite nose and such a pretty mouth, such a beautiful figure."

On the 10th February 1840 they were married in the Chapel Royal.

"It was", said Victoria,

"the happiest, brightest moment in my life."

They were both just 20.

The Archbishop of Canterbury

suggested the Queen might like to delete the word "obey"

from her part of the marriage vows.

She was Queen after all.

"No", said Victoria, "I'd like that to be kept."

It was a marriage based on powerful physical attraction.

Shortly after the wedding night,

a breathless Victoria wrote in her journal

"My dearest Albert put on my stockings for me.

"I went in and saw him shave, a great delight for me."

They chose the renowned painter Franz Winterhalter

to immortalise their romance.

He did more than any other artist

to create their image for the British public and the world.

Winterhalter knew how to turn a rather dumpy young woman

into a glamorous royal presence.

And a slightly nervous young prince into a virile master of his domain.

Well, they adored Winterhalter. Well, of course, anybody would.

He was the kind of combination of Mario Testino and Cecil Beaton.

He waved a wand of magic over them.

A German painter, height of romanticism,

goes through the 19th Century transforming royalty

as though they'd floated down on a cloud covered with diamonds.

Like a Vogue photographer, managed all the highlights,

any wrinkles went away, the dress and everything looked incredible.

We're just going to lift this slightly. We're going to just place it out of the way to the back.

Perhaps the most striking portrait at the exhibition is one that has rarely been seen in public.

The painting hung for many years in Albert's bedroom, for his eyes only.

She called it the secret painting because her with her hair loose,

that was quite dashing.

-It's rather come hither.

-It was but it was done entirely for him.

She has her hair, her tresses undone cascading round her shoulders,

leaning back looking extremely voluptuous.

Really, as she must have greeted him when he crossed from his bedroom to hers frankly.

It's a very, very, very sexy portrait.

As children followed,

Winterhalter was always on hand to weave a royal fairytale.

The young Victoria and her baby as a 19th-Century Madonna and Child.

Or a royal household that echoed the Holy Family.

The old Duke of Wellington offers a gift to the baby prince,

one of the three Kings at the nativity.

Prince Albert then wrote to Queen Victoria in his 20s, saying

"Where is the present the Duke of Wellington gave me in that painting?"

Queen Victoria had to write back and say "I'm terribly sorry there wasn't one, it was all made up."

-So just made up for the painting.

-He thought it had been kept from him.

-There he was being presented it.

-By his godfather.

-There was nothing inside.

It was designed to make it look, you know.

A regal husband and wife preside over a nursery teeming with royal children.

Winterhalter's pictures gave the British public an image of a new kind of Royal Family.

"They say no sovereign was ever more loved than I am", said Victoria.

"And this is because of our domestic home, the good example it presents."

For both of them a happy home must have come as something of a relief.

For all their rich and privileged backgrounds,

both had suffered a childhood that had nearly broken them.

Victoria was born in Kensington Palace in London.

It was her home until she became Queen.

As a child, Victoria's character was forcefully, even brutally, formed here.

In June 1819, the future Queen Victoria was christened in this room.

For the first 18 years of her life, she was a pawn in an elaborate game of royal chess.

Sometimes it was nasty, sometimes it was farcical.

Victoria was the only legitimate heir to the throne but she was still just a girl.

Her father died the year after she was born.

Her mother, the Duchess of Kent, devised a rigid system of upbringing

designed to break her daughter's spirit.

She even had a name for it, the Kensington System.

It was the most unnatural and abnormal childhood you can imagine.

It involved treating Victoria like a cross between a naughty infant and a china doll.

She wasn't allowed her own room.

She shared this one with her mother, even past her 18th birthday.

She wasn't allowed to walk down stairs without someone holding her hand.

She might injure herself.

She was never allowed to be alone, she might come to harm.

Or worse, she might start thinking for herself.

Then the moment came when Victoria learnt she was now Queen.

She seized her chance and for the first time excluded her mother from the room.

The Kensington system was not only monstrous, it also backfired.

It was supposed to break her will, actually it strengthened it.

And it helps to explain why a happy domestic life with a husband and children became so important to her.

She wouldn't have to wait long.

She met her future husband at her 17th birthday party.

Albert was her first cousin and the same age as Victoria.

He'd been brought up not in Britain, but in Germany.

Albert came from Coburg, a tiny medieval town that had barely changed since the Middle Ages.

At the time it was just one of dozens of tiny dukedoms and principalities

that made up greater Germany.

Albert's father, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg was neither rich,

nor powerful, but he was a master at playing the royal marriage market.

Albert said that he'd known from the age of three,

if all went according to plan, he'd marry the future Queen of England, Victoria.

Albert grew up in the castle of Rosenau, just outside Coburg.

It looks cosy enough.

Half castle, half gingerbread house.

Albert's father had turned the family home into a Gothic fantasy.

It's a miniature romantic version of a medieval fortress.

It looks much the same now as it did in Albert's time.

But Rosenau wasn't a very happy place. Albert's father had affairs.

Albert's mother, whom he adored, felt neglected and miserable.

The young prince was a solemn and studious sort of chap,

who took life very seriously from an early age.

He and his brother shared these attic rooms with their tutor.

This is what he wrote in his diary on the 26th January 1825

"In the lesson we recited and I cried because I could not say my repetition,

"for I had not paid attention."

He was just six.

And then a month later

"I cried at my lessons today because I could not find a verb.

"The tutor pinched me to show me what a verb was and I cried about it."

There was plenty to cry about.

A year earlier, his mother had been banished for having a lover.

Albert never saw her again.

Albert's childhood was quite a disastrous one.

It was traumatic and he told his oldest daughter, Victoria,

he was very close to this daughter,

that sometimes he really had wished himself away and he more or less felt suicidal as a child.

So, yes, he was a bit of a cry baby, but it's very understandable

because he had been through a traumatic experience and nobody wanted to talk with him about this.

Though the childhoods of Albert and Victoria were not identical, they were amazingly similar.

Both suffered emotionally from selfish parents,

both were disgusted by the behaviour of their parents' generation, adulterous, chaotic, irresponsible

and as adults they'd both reacted strongly against this picture of married life.

More than anything, they wanted to create a happy family home.

Albert built a seaside palace for their growing family.

Osborne House was in his favourite Italian-Renaissance style

with every possible ornament,

bell towers...

courtyards...

..fountains.

They always wanted where they lived to be what they called gemutlich, German for cosy.

OK, it's a pretty grand type of cosy,

but more than anywhere else, this place gives you a real sense of how they wanted to live.

Unusually for the time, they decorated their rooms with bright colours

with painted columns and cornices in the Italian style.

This is where they began to surround themselves with the art they gave each other.

One thing that strikes me at Osborne it that Victoria surrounded herself

with very sensual, even sexy, statues, paintings

there was lots of flesh on show and perfect bosoms.

Given that Albert was looking at all these images as well,

any woman would have to be pretty confident about her own physical attractions,

not to feel at least a bit threatened by it.

There really is a spectacular amount of naked flesh on show at Osborne.

It firmly dispatches any notion that Victoria was, well, a prude.

Victoria gave this fantastic display of voluptuous flesh to Albert

and had it placed opposite their desks

where they could gaze on it for hours.

She described it as

"A most lovely picture containing a group of beautiful women."

Aren't they just?

But you can't help noticing a similarity

to one of Winterhalter's other pictures.

There was, in fact, a scandalous rumour at the time

that Empress Eugenie and her ladies in waiting

must have been the models for the naked figures in Albert's picture.

I suppose if it was art it was all right.

It was painted, do you know what I mean?

It was one way, presumably,

of having something like that but it was always with a classical theme, wasn't it.

So that, I think, helped to centre it a bit rather than just...

The titillation element it seemed to me.

There's more flesh on display up in Albert's bathroom.

It's a picture of Hercules

surrendering his power to his mistress, the slave Omphale.

There's a nice touch of role reversal here.

Look, he's holding her distaff which was used for spinning

and an ancient symbol of womanhood,

and she is wearing his lion's costume.

So this painting is asking "Who is in charge here?"

"Who's wearing the trousers?"

But among the nudes and heavy symbolism,

romance was never far away.

Look at this, it's a Minton porcelain dressing set

that Albert gave Victoria as a Christmas present in 1853.

There's all the little pots for Victoria's potions and powder puffs.

And each one has VR on it for Victoria Regina.

And then the crowning glory, literally with the crown,

is this fabulously and preposterously

over-the-top mirror here.

But there's something fantastically romantic as well,

because as Victoria sat and looked at herself in the mirror,

she'd be surrounded by Albert's angels looking on adoringly

and then there's a final romantic touch,

this little couple down here, stealing a kiss.

Osborne is Albert's creation.

Increasingly his taste, in architecture and in art, would come to dominate.

"How anxiously nervous I always felt",

Victoria wrote, "knowing what taste he had.

"What a judge of art he was and how great was my joy

"if any picture I had bought gave him real pleasure."

Queen Victoria felt that she came nowhere near Prince Albert in terms of his knowledge and taste

and everything else. She kept saying "My taste is so bad compared to his."

I suppose you could say that Prince Albert's taste was more intellectual

and hers was more about wanting to have records of people and events

and family and goodness knows what else.

She had a marvellous eye, obviously.

Victoria herself drew her children

again and again.

Into this album she placed an enormous number of sketches

of her children, starting, of course, with Vicky, the eldest child.

She's being fed with a bottle here, by the nurse, yes.

With a bottle, and then we see her sitting up.

The things that intrigues me, you see this sketch here,

of the gorgeous, plump little arm,

is Victoria's written in her diary,

around this time and how she doesn't think little babies are attractive.

When they are so small and they look like little frogs, she says.

Here she looks like she's revelling

in the plumptiousness and squidginess of little babies.

I think what she hated about children

was childbirth which cannot have been fun.

She was not happy when she was pregnant.

-No.

-She was very cross that she'd fallen pregnant so quickly.

And she's got some talent, Victoria as well, look at that.

Yes. I think what is unique about her is she was head of state,

she was doing all these amazing things

and she was also still finding time to do these sketches.

Absolutely, what else have we got here?

Oh, look, the little pigtails.

That is so lovely.

Vicky... And this is fancy dress, one assumes, look at that.

I think that's such a wonderful way

of trying to record moments in somebody's life.

I mean, nowadays people take photographs.

I never think they're as interesting, funnily enough as somebody's personal attempt

to try and record however good or bad it is.

So many of them had drawing teachers in those days.

They had a real foundation in understanding how to observe, which is half the battle.

Professional artists too were commissioned to paint picture after picture of their family.

Paintings of the children even adorn the furniture.

If you look back on it, it's immortalising a totally closed world.

It's a totally enclosed world.

Everything to do with them, and which they did,

what they collected within that area was totally closed and the heart of it is the family

and just endless pictures of those children, endless pictures of each other.

within a kind of closed domestic interior.

It gets a bit spooky at times.

Now talk me through this rather gruesome little collection.

These are marble replicas

of several of Queen Victoria's infant children at particular stages.

When visitors come to Osborne, they often come through here, this room

and say, "Oh no, dead babies."

In fact, these children grew up to have perfectly good adult lives.

I suppose it's because marble is a material of death in a way.

It's what you use for monuments.

It looks like a collection of severed limbs.

Well, it does, but let me tell you how you made these.

You first of all had to take a plaster cast of the particular limb

and I don't know if you've ever tried to take a plaster cast of a three-month-old or a three-year-old,

it was done while they were asleep.

Probably here in the nursery at Osborne.

This old bearded man would creep in with a bucket of plaster, make a plaster cast.

That's not what we're looking at, we're looking at a carving.

What's happened is the sculptor has idealised, he's ironed out the tiny imperfections in the plaster

and they are most exquisitely-carved objects.

In this one, I think this is Princess Louise

and she's holding a little pea between her thumb and forefinger.

I think the sculptor just didn't dare to remove that last bit of marble

because he would have knocked off the finger or thumb in the process.

I can see the charm, sort of, of a little podgy foot,

but talk me through the ear, what's that all about?

This is Prince Albert's ear.

This was a feature of her husband

that Queen Victoria would have wanted the sculptor to get right.

I wonder if she talked into it?

Albert, I'm thinking of having another nude done, I'm sure you'll like it.

Who knows?

Victoria and Albert were the first royal couple to make Buckingham Palace their London home.

It had stood empty for years, neglected and unloved.

As at Osborne, they were keen to make it their own.

For a start they filled it with pictures of the family.

Everywhere they lived they turned their walls into a giant family album.

Buckingham Palace is an official residence.

The statues here have rather more clothes on than at Osborne.

Victoria gave this statue to Albert shortly after they were married.

For this Victoria told the sculpture, John Gibson,

to make it like a Greek statue and to make it life-size.

Well, Victoria was tiny, of course, and Gibson knew he has to make it look regal

so he's given her a garland in one hand

with which to bestow honours and a scroll in the other to symbolise law making.

And this is what he gave her.

Albert in similarly noble mode, this time he's a Greek warrior.

He's customised it, of course. On his armour are the national flowers of his adopted country,

showing his commitment to his new country, Britain.

Here, on his breastplate, the winged figure of victory, or Victoria, of course,

showing that he was Victoria's defender, her champion.

Very romantic.

They transformed what had been a rather run down, shabby palace into a vibrant, colourful affair.

Together, they built a ballroom.

They held grand costume balls and danced till the small hours.

For a while, Buckingham Palace was known as the headquarters of taste.

QUACKING

But despite enjoying the crowded whirl of life in the royal court,

Victoria and Albert also craved peace and privacy.

They found it about as far away as it is possible to get,

the Highlands of Scotland.

TRADITIONAL SCOTTISH MUSIC PLAYS

Their passion for Scotland was part of the reinvention of the Highlands as wild and romantic,

all started by the novels of Sir Walter Scott earlier in the century.

Kilts, clans, chieftains, wild scenery, all this was once dismissed by the English as primitive.

Now it was exotic and exciting.

Their first trip together started a lifelong love affair with the Highlands.

For Albert, Scotland's forests and glens were a welcome reminder of his native Germany.

What he and Victoria wanted here too was a refuge,

a place of their own.

The castle they designed was half Highland romance, half German fairytale.

Some people called it pepperpot and gingerbread, Albert and Victoria called it beautiful.

They hurled themselves into the Highland lifestyle.

Everyone had to wear Highland dress, porridge and kippers were served for breakfast

and, according to one maid of honour, the pipers played loud enough to blow your head off.

Inside, the style was robustly, even overwhelmingly Scottish.

From curtains to carpets to wallpaper,

it was disparagingly dubbed "tartanitis".

One of their grandchildren recalled, "It had a way of flickering before your eyes and confusing your brain."

One artist in particular was their favourite to depict life at Balmoral.

I've always, always loved the Carl Haag watercolours.

A real genius, I think, and he stayed a lot at Balmoral.

He did all these, I think, wonderful watercolours of the children

and the scenes of the family going up Lochnagar, the mountain,

for picnics or whatever it was.

A very royal kind of picnic.

As Victoria, the children and attendants follow on behind,

an intrepid Albert leads the way to the top of the mountain.

The painting was his present to Victoria.

In Victoria's present to Albert, she's come out from the Castle to admire the day's hunt.

Albert proudly shows off a dead stag.

Actually, Albert was a terrible shot, so a bit of poetic licence there.

For them, Scotland wasn't only an escape into a kind of simulated Duchy of Cobourg

dropped in the middle of Scotland,

it was an escape to an earlier period.

In the South everything was the world of commerce and the city and business and manufacture

and up in Scotland there were feudal laws and castles and everybody bowed and scraped.

It was a world which had completely gone in the South.

There they were up with clansmen and tartans and chiefs of the clan

and quite a primitive society

and that I think appealed to her.

The Royal Workshops in London are where the art and objects

of the Royal Collection are conserved and restored.

A pair of candelabra from Balmoral are being spruced up for the coming exhibition.

These are good examples of things that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had made for their own house.

They're great English craftsmanship of the mid-19th century.

Minton of Stoke here

and Winfield of Birmingham,

and in this very striking Highland style, clearly designed for Balmoral.

The figures were designed by Edwin Landseer, the painter, who was often a guest staying at Balmoral.

How would you describe the style of these?

They're really in the Scottish, Baronial, Scottish style!

-Very grand.

-Very, very grand with all the motifs -

the stags heads, the shooting bags, the rifles, the dirks, daggers,

hunting horns here, and, of course, the full Highland dress,

and no doubt hunting and hunting hunting dogs depicted as well.

I think it's a great sense of fun to be able to say,

"Well, we built a Highland castle, "let's give everything a Highland theme."

Now, in this rather handy picture you've got here... when would this be painted?

This was painted in 1857.

And it works as a brilliant reference guide, doesn't it?

These are here and you can see exactly what they used to look like.

Absolutely! Here you can see the candelabra

in the Queen's drawing room, showing their original decoration of gold and patinated silver.

-And you can see that the hunting horns here were black as well as the stag's head.

-What made them black?

That was a form of patination.

It was artificially oxidising the surface of the silver to give it this rather blue/black finish.

I notice that as well as the wear and tear here,

there's a break around the neck here, so they've had a few knocks, these things.

-When they're done you won't see any of that.

-Really?

-I promise.

-There's a tell-tale bit of glue here I can see.

The artist who designed the candelabra is better known

as the man who sculpted the lions in Trafalgar Square.

And animals were what Edwin Landseer did best

and Victoria and Albert loved the heroic, often sentimental way he portrayed them.

A stag surveys his kingdom.

A sheepdog mourns his dead master.

And Albert's favourite greyhound.

Victoria commissioned this painting for Albert's birthday just a year after they married.

It's a portrait of Albert without the prince, a collection of the things dearest to his heart.

His dog, Eos, guards her master's possessions,

his ivory topped cane, his top hat, leather gloves

and a stool covered in deerskin, a reference to Albert the huntsman.

Landseer borrowed these things without asking so there was a bit of a flutter in the royal household

when Albert wanted to go out and his hat and gloves couldn't be found.

Here's Eos again, another birthday present, and their daughter Vicky, aged two.

Landseer's pictures portrayed Victoria and Albert as the very model of a royal couple.

At home with the locals, joining in their pursuits.

Fond of children.

Fond of animals,

alive or dead.

It was a very sentimental age. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that.

It depends on the way people are looking at the world at the time.

You could say it was trite, or self-righteous, or moralising or something,

but I don't think one should necessarily condemn because of that.

It is interesting how, sometimes, things go through these fashions, don't they?

People remove a lot of things, saying, "Oh, that's boring," or "overblown," or whatever.

Only to find 25, 50 years later, it's coming back again.

Windsor Castle has been the home of English Kings and Queens since medieval times.

The castle houses more of the royal art collection than any other royal residence.

Growing up in those houses like Windsor, you know, you rush up and down corridors.

I don't know, mucking about as small children, never really noticing the surroundings.

I've never forgotten, suddenly, I think it must have been about the age of 14,

I suddenly started to notice the paintings.

I can't tell you how wonderful it was, that moment.

Most of the art here is formal and official, staged to make a courtly impression.

But for Victoria and Albert, art was also something more homely, a kind of diary in pictures.

Both of them were obsessed with recording everything.

Little watercolours of the Christmas decorations, the rooms they went to.

Every single event. It was absolutely every aspect of their lives.

There's absolutely no precedent I know before Victoria and Albert

of a sovereign or a royal couple

setting out to record every significant moment in their lives.

This is one of the albums which have survived from Victoria and Albert's collection.

In this case, the Theatrical Album.

-Can we have a look? It's a bit like, you know, these days people look through their photo albums.

-Yes.

Exactly. This is by Edward Corbould.

It is a depiction of a performance of King John, in London in 1852.

So, this is full of images from plays that they had been to together?

Yes. Indeed.

-So, what else have we got? This is fascinating.

-Here we have...

"Una noche en Sevilla - the Spanish dancers at the Haymarket Theatre, 1855." Look at that.

Occasionally, we know they actually travelled around with these albums.

We know from Queen Victoria's journal that they would spend

quiet evenings together turning through the pages and reminiscing.

About things they'd seen, places they'd been? What about these, then?

These scenes here? This looks like Buckingham Palace, isn't it?

Yes. This is the garden front of Buckingham Palace, in 1839.

And it was number one in Souvenir Album number one.

So, this is the first one to be included.

-It's a good place to start, isn't it?

-A good place to start.

-With your home.

Here, to me, a very, very touching one.

It's the heart of what these souvenir albums were all about.

This is the schoolroom where Albert and his elder brother had their lessons.

The table on which they were dressed by their nurse,

the piano that they used to play,

and Victoria in her journal in 1845 describes the holes in the walls

which were the result of their fencing lessons, which took place in the same room.

What have we got under here?

-This is Manchester.

-Wow, industrial Manchester.

Yes. Shortly after their visit to Manchester in the late 1850s.

You can feel the pollution in the sky.

These huge chimneys, and then the spires of the churches in the background.

But seen rather idyllically from the rural foreground.

Victoria and Albert's art reflected their life and their love.

But it wasn't an entirely equal partnership.

Albert loved Victoria, certainly.

But Victoria adored Albert.

And like any couple, there were tensions.

Albert avoided his wife if she was in a temper, preferring to have it out with her in writing.

"You have again lost your self control quite unnecessarily.

"I did not begin the conversation, but you have followed me about and continued it from room to room.

"I do my duty towards you even though it means life is embittered by 'scenes.' "

Their ever growing family placed an additional strain on their relationship.

Giving birth to nine children in 15 years, an exhausted Victoria

found herself having to allow Albert to take the lead.

It's mainly her pregnancies that slow her down,

she realises this relationship can only survive

if one of them gives in, and she's the one who gives in.

In many ways, he breaks her will.

And you can see that in the letters he writes to her when they are courting,

he writes, "Beloved Victoria," and when they have been married for a while, "My dear child."

Albert valued self control and liked to be in control of others,

something that did not endear him to many around him.

Albert had few friends at court, or anywhere else.

He could be ungracious in society, arrogant, humourless.

And he didn't flirt. "Albert,"

said the Queen, "is seldom much pleased with ladies or princesses."

Albert was very driven. I mean, he was a Victorian before you invented the word "Victorian".

He was into self-betterment.

He was into religion.

He wanted to do something with his life. He wanted to help.

He wanted to work for a greater good. That's why he took on Victoria.

I mean, she was a project in many ways to him.

And, um...he believed in educating himself all his life.

He has so many interests, he was in, in that way, a renaissance prince.

The pinnacle of Albert's achievements came ten years into their marriage.

To celebrate the progress of Victorian Britain,

a Great Exhibition was to be held in London's Hyde Park.

"It would be," said Albert, "a living picture

"of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived."

Albert was in his element, tirelessly pushing through

his plans for one of the greatest events Britain would ever see.

A colossal building of steel and glass was constructed to house it.

It would become known as the Crystal Palace.

There were halls dedicated to art, science and industry.

As always, Albert and Victoria commissioned dozens of paintings

to record Albert's vision of universal harmony.

Victoria believed that at last people would see the brilliant and creative Albert that she adored.

"The greatest day in our history," she said. "Albert's name is immortalised"

6 million people

went to see that exhibition in 1851.

6 million people! How did they get there, for a start?

Presumably, the railways were beginning to become more effective, but even so,

it was truly remarkable.

And it obviously had a major impact generally.

So the people could see what was happening, and what was available,

and where things were going and so on. But it was a bold venture.

Also on show were some of Victoria and Albert's own possessions,

such as this extraordinary ivory throne.

It's now being restored in the royal workshops.

It's a throne that was presented to Queen Victoria by someone called the Rajah of Travancore

and it was the centrepiece of the Indian Court of the Great Exhibition.

And what did she do with it?

-She used it.

-She actually sat on it?

Yes, she used it at Windsor in the audience room.

We've got a number of images of her sitting in it.

In 1855, a bit after the Great Exhibition, she received the ambassadors of Siam

-who had to crawl towards the throne on the carpet, she was sitting in this.

-What, crawl on all fours?

Yes, out of tribute to the Queen. And she lost it, she went into uncontrolled fits of laughter.

The poor chaps!

-This must have been shaking.

-And this is ivory, isn't it?

Yes, solid ivory.

-Ivory veneer, ivory plaques, and carved.

-Wow.

-These missing bits here?

-It's not missing, we've removed it so it can be cleaned and reapplied.

And when it comes to finding new ivory, you can't trade in ivory these days...

No, we don't use new ivory, we use antique ivory.

Ivory from trophies and presents.

So you're just plundering other ivory?

Yes, we've had a lot of ivory in store from the hunting days of the Raj and the Royals.

Here's a very old part of a tusk.

This was a piece that was in the cheek of the elephant, and this is the other end.

-You can see the vessel that runs through it.

-Look at that!

-It is very, very heavy.

-So, clean it, obviously.

Let's have a go.

That is extraordinary!

Two of those, and that's only half of it.

I had no idea it was so heavy.

So you'd get this, and once you've cleaned it, I can see inside because there is a crack here...

And once you get below this yellow, it's pure white?

-It's not pure white, it's ivory white.

-Yes, of course.

But it will bleach in time due to UV light.

And this little gap here, is there something missing?

Yes, the whole centrepiece has been missing.

-We've made a mock-up of it to see how it looks.

-So this...

This is actually ivory with a rope design around the centre and a jewel inset.

And then it just slots beautifully into here?

Yes, you can place it in.

Perfect.

When it's put together, it has green silk velvet cushions on it,

it looks altogether much finer in its finished state, we hope.

As Albert approached his forties, he seemed to be growing increasingly unhappy.

The Great Exhibition had been his towering achievement, but it was soon forgotten.

He was addicted to work, but neither the public nor the court

had taken this foreign intellectual to their hearts.

They thought he was too clever.

I don't know, maybe he didn't always take part in all the things

that they expected him to take part in, I don't know.

But it is, I can see it's quite difficult to come from another country

and...

live in somebody else's.

Perhaps they thought he was too clever by half.

Basically, those last few years, he was practically dead with exhaustion with everything he took on,

all the state papers, all the minutes, every time he interviewed somebody he made notes.

Everything was landed onto him, it was impossible.

Albert felt increasingly isolated.

He had few British friends, and Victoria couldn't give him

the intellectual companionship he needed.

In a letter he sent home to Germany, he described his life

as being like a donkey going round and round in circles to bring up water from a well.

Victoria began to worry.

"My greatest of all anxieties,"

she said, "is that dearest Albert wears himself out by all he does."

She was right to be concerned.

In the winter of 1861, Albert complained of feeling ill.

At Windsor Castle, he fell into a fever.

He realises that he has something worse than a cold, and he knew that

he couldn't talk with his wife about it because she was writing letters

to her children saying, "Oh, Papa's moaning again and I don't understand what's wrong with him."

She loved him very much, but because she herself was such a robust person,

she couldn't understand that her husband was totally burnt out at such a young age.

On 9th December, the doctors diagnosed typhoid.

Five days later, Albert died.

He was 42.

The Queen was devastated.

Why hadn't he put up more of a struggle?

She appeared to feel strangely let down by him.

"He seemed to care not to live,"

she said. "He died from want of what they call 'pluck'."

But he died so young, it obviously did completely and utterly,

um...destroy her life.

Albert never saw Victoria's last gift to him.

The mausoleum in the grounds of Windsor Castle is in his favourite Italian Renaissance style.

The effigy of Victoria was carved at the same time as Albert's.

But it would be another 40 years before it was laid by his side.

Victoria and Albert's love for each other had inspired their love of art.

When Albert died, Victoria's passion for art died with him.

Royal marriages don't always touch the life of a nation.

This one did.

Albert and Victoria's 21 years together created a wealth of art

that spoke of their love for each other,

their need to create a happy family home,

and their desire to chronicle it all for themselves and for posterity.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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