0:00:11 > 0:00:14Spring 1851.
0:00:17 > 0:00:21The word "Victorian" enters the English language
0:00:21 > 0:00:26and a very small woman enters a very big building.
0:00:26 > 0:00:29She's 4'11", yet somehow she fills it.
0:00:29 > 0:00:35The moment, so pregnant for the future, seems holy.
0:00:35 > 0:00:40Victoria is herself flooded with religious awe.
0:00:41 > 0:00:43One felt filled with devotion,
0:00:43 > 0:00:48more so than by any service I have ever heard.
0:00:48 > 0:00:54Neither she nor anyone else has ever seen anything like this building before -
0:00:54 > 0:00:57a greenhouse the size of a palace
0:00:57 > 0:01:03with the difference that this is, from the beginning, a people's palace.
0:01:03 > 0:01:08A popular magazine calls it "the crystal palace".
0:01:08 > 0:01:15Its grandest spaces are filled not with courtiers and flunkeys, but steam pumps and locomotives.
0:01:15 > 0:01:20A huge showcase for Britain's industrial empire.
0:01:20 > 0:01:22Just three years before, in 1848,
0:01:22 > 0:01:26Europe had been torn apart by revolutions.
0:01:26 > 0:01:31The government had feared the same would happen here.
0:01:31 > 0:01:38As it turned out, other countries had war and revolution, we had the Great Exhibition.
0:01:38 > 0:01:45Other countries had barricades, we had the cheerful queue for the turnstiles.
0:01:45 > 0:01:49In an era haunted by fears of overpopulation,
0:01:49 > 0:01:56this was one of the greatest mass movements of people in all of European history.
0:01:56 > 0:02:00Six million came to see the show of shows.
0:02:02 > 0:02:09In 1848, industrial machinery had seemed to be the enemy of ordinary men and women -
0:02:09 > 0:02:13the gaping mechanical jaws into which countless lives were fed,
0:02:13 > 0:02:17to be spat out again as cotton cloth or nails.
0:02:17 > 0:02:23Technology, the prophets of doom had warned, was an engine of inhumanity
0:02:23 > 0:02:27driving working people to desperation or revolt.
0:02:28 > 0:02:31But inside the glittering glasshouse
0:02:31 > 0:02:36someone seemed to have waved a magic wand over the mechanical brutes,
0:02:36 > 0:02:40turning them from ogres to busy, friendly giants
0:02:40 > 0:02:44happy to be gazed at on a family outing...
0:02:44 > 0:02:49not least by the first family of the land, assembled amidst the hardware.
0:02:52 > 0:02:56After all, Papa - Prince Albert - the moving force behind the exhibition,
0:02:56 > 0:03:00was the first prince in European history
0:03:00 > 0:03:07to wear his connection with the world of business as a badge of pride, not shame.
0:03:08 > 0:03:16But what about Mama? As the mother of a rapidly-expanding family, Victoria might've been expected to know
0:03:16 > 0:03:22that if the cult of progress was to make Britain not just a great nation but a good one -
0:03:22 > 0:03:25be a home maker not a home breaker -
0:03:25 > 0:03:32it would fall to our women to see us through the painful change to an industrial society
0:03:32 > 0:03:34safe and sound.
0:03:40 > 0:03:47But, of course, hers was no ordinary family. Despite the family photos, Queen Victoria was not Mrs Average.
0:03:47 > 0:03:54The age which would bear her name would see transformations in the lives of women
0:03:54 > 0:04:00which Victoria could never have imagined in the dazzling springtime of her reign.
0:04:00 > 0:04:04Whether she'd welcome them or even understand them,
0:04:04 > 0:04:10whether they'd sweep past her and her glass palace - that remained to be seen.
0:05:03 > 0:05:09In 1837, when she became queen, Victoria was only 18.
0:05:12 > 0:05:15She was as pure as a rosebud,
0:05:15 > 0:05:18which seemed a welcome change
0:05:18 > 0:05:23from the decidedly impure reigns of her uncles, George IV and William IV,
0:05:23 > 0:05:28addicted to the pleasures of the bed and the table,
0:05:28 > 0:05:34and indifferent to the hardships endured by the mass of their subjects.
0:05:37 > 0:05:40Unlike the uncles,
0:05:40 > 0:05:46Victoria had been brought up a model of virginal moderation and self denial.
0:05:46 > 0:05:49No regency pampering for her.
0:05:49 > 0:05:56At one point she and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, had to move out of Kensington Palace to save money.
0:05:58 > 0:06:03So Victoria's nursery years were spent at bracingly ordinary places
0:06:03 > 0:06:06like Ramsgate and Sidmouth.
0:06:09 > 0:06:12Much later in life, for some reason,
0:06:12 > 0:06:19Queen Victoria looked back on her childhood as a time of sadness and loneliness.
0:06:19 > 0:06:24It's true that, like many middle class and aristocratic children,
0:06:24 > 0:06:31she was subjected to an evangelical regime of prayers and constant self-examination.
0:06:31 > 0:06:37She kept a "behaviour book" full of solemn and self-critical entries.
0:06:38 > 0:06:40This one, for August 1832, reads,
0:06:40 > 0:06:48"Very, very, VERY..." - underlined - "..terribly..." - more underlining - "..naughty."
0:06:50 > 0:06:55But could Christian betterment, the driving force of her generation,
0:06:55 > 0:07:02be taken from SELF-improvement to bettering the life of her people? That was the question.
0:07:05 > 0:07:12On her first excursion through England's heart of industrial darkness,
0:07:12 > 0:07:16the teenage princess would see what she was up against.
0:07:16 > 0:07:23Near Birmingham, she travelled through the landscape of a British Inferno, sooty and sulphurous.
0:07:23 > 0:07:28The men, women, children, country and houses are all black.
0:07:28 > 0:07:32The country is very desolate everywhere.
0:07:32 > 0:07:36There are coals about, and the grass is quite blasted and black.
0:07:36 > 0:07:41I just now see an extraordinary building flaming with fire,
0:07:41 > 0:07:47smoking and burning coal heaps intermingled with wretched huts and carts,
0:07:47 > 0:07:51and little ragged children.
0:07:51 > 0:07:55But the view from the coach was the closest Victoria got
0:07:55 > 0:08:00to the bleak reality of Smokestack Britain.
0:08:00 > 0:08:04In any case, there was something else on HER mind -
0:08:04 > 0:08:07her upcoming date with history.
0:08:07 > 0:08:12All those tombs and crowns and thrones -
0:08:12 > 0:08:14was she ready?
0:08:17 > 0:08:20The moment would arrive all too soon
0:08:20 > 0:08:23in the small hours of June 20th 1837.
0:08:23 > 0:08:30The teenage princess in her nightgown, woken by the arrival of the Lord Chamberlain
0:08:30 > 0:08:33and the Archbishop of Canterbury...
0:08:33 > 0:08:38'..who acquainted me that my poor uncle the King was no more
0:08:38 > 0:08:41'and, consequently, that I am Queen.
0:08:41 > 0:08:48'I am very young, and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced.
0:08:48 > 0:08:55'But I am sure that very few have more real goodwill and more real desire to do what is fit and right
0:08:55 > 0:08:57'than I have.'
0:09:02 > 0:09:05At her coronation on June 28th 1838,
0:09:05 > 0:09:09the young Queen showed what she was made of,
0:09:09 > 0:09:14carrying the immense weight of the robes and regalia with aplomb.
0:09:14 > 0:09:22But she also managed something more important than dignity - a glimpse of humanity.
0:09:24 > 0:09:31When the 87-year-old Lord Rolle tottered as he tried to mount the steps of the throne to do homage,
0:09:31 > 0:09:39Victoria's kind-hearted instinct was to rise and go down the steps to meet him.
0:09:39 > 0:09:41Everyone noticed.
0:09:44 > 0:09:47She was young, but not precocious.
0:09:47 > 0:09:54She knew she needed help, and she was wise enough to ask for it from someone superbly able to give it,
0:09:54 > 0:09:58the Whig Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.
0:10:00 > 0:10:08He won Victoria's confidence by the simple but inspired tactic of never, ever talking down to her,
0:10:08 > 0:10:12never treating her like a child in need of protection.
0:10:12 > 0:10:15Instead, he treated her like an adult
0:10:15 > 0:10:22sophisticated enough to enjoy his worldly wisdom, his political gossip, and even his off-colour jokes.
0:10:22 > 0:10:29Under his guidance, Victoria's confidence in her public persona blossomed.
0:10:33 > 0:10:37She was, of course, the most desirable catch in Europe.
0:10:39 > 0:10:44Victoria's mother had thrown banquets and balls
0:10:44 > 0:10:49to ensure Victoria met the most eligible princes,
0:10:49 > 0:10:54including her Saxe-Coburg cousins, Ernest and Albert.
0:10:56 > 0:11:02It may well have been her uncle Leopold who, in the spring of 1839,
0:11:02 > 0:11:09first made the suggestion to Victoria that she might like to marry Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg.
0:11:09 > 0:11:15Like all young women, she probably initially found the subject a bit embarrassing,
0:11:15 > 0:11:22but once she got used to it, helped by that handsome or, as she put it, "angelic" German head,
0:11:22 > 0:11:25well, she pretty much ran the show,
0:11:25 > 0:11:32virtually grabbing hold of her curly-haired intended and sprinting for the altar.
0:11:33 > 0:11:36It was Victoria who supplied the ring,
0:11:36 > 0:11:39asked Albert for a lock of his hair,
0:11:39 > 0:11:42and wallowed in the kissing sessions.
0:11:47 > 0:11:52If she sometimes seemed determined to wear the trousers in this marriage,
0:11:52 > 0:11:59there were also other times, especially right after the wedding, when Victoria simply melted away
0:11:59 > 0:12:02into the amazed bliss of conjugal love.
0:12:03 > 0:12:11When day dawned - for we did not sleep much - and I beheld that beautiful, angelic face by my side,
0:12:11 > 0:12:14it was more than I can express.
0:12:14 > 0:12:18He does look so beautiful in his shirt only,
0:12:18 > 0:12:21with his beautiful throat seen.
0:12:21 > 0:12:29Already, the second day since our marriage, his love and gentleness is beyond everything,
0:12:29 > 0:12:32and to kiss that dear, soft cheek,
0:12:32 > 0:12:36to press my lips to his, is heavenly bliss.
0:12:38 > 0:12:43My dearest Albert put on my stockings for me.
0:12:43 > 0:12:46I went in and saw him shave.
0:12:46 > 0:12:48A great delight for me.
0:12:53 > 0:13:00Victoria and Albert's passion for each other was a strictly private matter.
0:13:01 > 0:13:04But for countless numbers of Britons
0:13:04 > 0:13:10in the suffocatingly overcrowded industrial cities like Manchester,
0:13:10 > 0:13:14bedroom privacy was an unimaginable luxury.
0:13:15 > 0:13:22Manchester was the very best and the very worst taken to terrifying extremes,
0:13:22 > 0:13:25a new kind of city in the world,
0:13:25 > 0:13:30the chimneys of industrial suburbs greeting you with columns of smoke.
0:13:30 > 0:13:33200,000 drones packed into the hive
0:13:33 > 0:13:38to make money for the lords of Cottonopolis.
0:13:39 > 0:13:44An American visitor taken to Manchester's black spots saw...
0:13:44 > 0:13:47..Wretched, defrauded,
0:13:47 > 0:13:50oppressed, crushed human nature
0:13:50 > 0:13:54lying in bleeding fragments.
0:13:55 > 0:14:00And thanked God for not having been born poor in England.
0:14:08 > 0:14:13The cotton mills were brutally demanding taskmasters.
0:14:16 > 0:14:22Whole families spent almost all of their working hours tending to the machinery.
0:14:26 > 0:14:31Children were given menial but dangerous jobs
0:14:31 > 0:14:36like scavenging cotton fluff from beneath the moving machinery.
0:14:40 > 0:14:46As bad as all this was, it was even worse when there were no jobs at all.
0:14:46 > 0:14:53In the first years of Victoria's reign, hands were being laid off in tens of thousands.
0:14:56 > 0:15:01It would be a woman, Elizabeth Gaskell, who'd be the whistleblower,
0:15:01 > 0:15:06the first of Victoria's sisters to stick her neck out.
0:15:06 > 0:15:11Amazingly, her blazing protest took the genteel form of a novel.
0:15:11 > 0:15:15But what a book! When "Mary Barton" was published in 1848,
0:15:15 > 0:15:20nobody, not even Charles Dickens, had gone as far as Gaskell
0:15:20 > 0:15:25in looking dead-on at the grim reality of industrial misery.
0:15:30 > 0:15:37The middle-class wife of a Unitarian preacher, Gaskell took herself right into the lower depths of the city,
0:15:37 > 0:15:40to the gin palaces and open sewers,
0:15:40 > 0:15:46dark, reeking alleys where skin-and-bones children played among the rats.
0:15:46 > 0:15:51In Mary Barton, you didn't just see, you HEARD working-class Manchester
0:15:51 > 0:15:56in the pages of literature for the very first time.
0:15:56 > 0:16:03To most of her readers, it must have been a language more foreign than French or German.
0:16:08 > 0:16:13We do not want dainties, we want bellyfuls.
0:16:13 > 0:16:16We do not want their grand houses,
0:16:16 > 0:16:21we want a roof to cover us from the rain, the snow and the storm.
0:16:22 > 0:16:29Aye, and not alone to cover us, but the helpless ones that cling to us in the keen wind
0:16:29 > 0:16:36and ask us with their eyes why we brought them into the world to suffer.
0:16:40 > 0:16:44By the time you'd finished Mary Barton,
0:16:44 > 0:16:51one word, struck like a hammer over and over again, would've lodged in your memory. "Clemmed" - starved.
0:16:51 > 0:16:58You say it, and you call up the entire knife-edge world of struggling to survive
0:16:58 > 0:17:00that Elizabeth Gaskell had created.
0:17:02 > 0:17:08Elizabeth Gaskell believed that honest, graphic social reporting could make a difference.
0:17:08 > 0:17:11She wrote to her cousin...
0:17:11 > 0:17:18My poor Mary Barton is stirring all sorts of angry feelings against me in Manchester.
0:17:18 > 0:17:25But those best acquainted with the way of thinking and feeling among the poor acknowledge its truth,
0:17:25 > 0:17:28which is the acknowledgement I most desire,
0:17:28 > 0:17:34because evils, being once recognised, are halfway on towards their remedy.
0:17:34 > 0:17:39One of Gaskell's fans, the social philosopher Thomas Carlyle,
0:17:39 > 0:17:46thought it was pointless to try and improve a system so fundamentally inhuman as industrialisation.
0:17:49 > 0:17:54Nothing is now done by hand. All is by rule and calculated contrivance.
0:17:54 > 0:18:01On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop to make room for a speedier, inanimate one.
0:18:01 > 0:18:09The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster.
0:18:11 > 0:18:13There is no end to machinery.
0:18:25 > 0:18:31For Carlyle, there was only one route to salvation. Britain must turn aside from the machine
0:18:31 > 0:18:36to summon the spirit of the Christian centuries of the Middle Ages,
0:18:36 > 0:18:40the last time we'd taken it for granted
0:18:40 > 0:18:45that faith was more important than money.
0:18:45 > 0:18:49To bring about this great conversion from Babylon to Jerusalem,
0:18:49 > 0:18:54nothing less would do than a Christian revolution in building.
0:18:54 > 0:19:01And no-one was more convinced of this than the greatest of the Gothic revivalists,
0:19:01 > 0:19:04Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.
0:19:04 > 0:19:11A new generation of churches would be in the front line in the war to save Victorian souls.
0:19:13 > 0:19:17Pugin was never happy just to sound off.
0:19:17 > 0:19:25He believed, with the fervour of the old faith, that a properly beautified church was the very face of heaven.
0:19:29 > 0:19:33And before he died - brutally early, at the age of 40 - he made sure,
0:19:33 > 0:19:38especially here at the Church of St Giles in Cheadle, Staffordshire,
0:19:38 > 0:19:44to let some people see how gloriously colourful it could be.
0:19:51 > 0:19:55But however spiritually nourishing this might have been,
0:19:55 > 0:20:00it wasn't going to put bread on the tables of the needy millions.
0:20:00 > 0:20:07Victoria's first decade as Queen was also a time of economic hardship for many of her subjects.
0:20:07 > 0:20:13A slump in foreign trade had led to mass lay-offs in the industrial cities.
0:20:13 > 0:20:17Bread was an unaffordable luxury for the unemployed,
0:20:17 > 0:20:23who blamed the Corn Laws for keeping cheap, imported wheat out of Britain.
0:20:23 > 0:20:27Working-class anger and desperation was close to boiling point.
0:20:27 > 0:20:32For middle-class reformers, the answer was easy.
0:20:32 > 0:20:37"All we need to do is to get rid of the Corn Laws and all will be well."
0:20:37 > 0:20:42But the militant spokesmen of the WORKING people weren't convinced.
0:20:42 > 0:20:44They wanted more.
0:20:44 > 0:20:52Only a truly popular government - a democracy, in fact - would do something about THEIR distress.
0:20:52 > 0:20:56They set out their demands in a "people's charter",
0:20:56 > 0:20:59a new Magna Carta for the modern age.
0:20:59 > 0:21:04It demanded the right to vote for all men,
0:21:04 > 0:21:07secret ballots, annual parliaments.
0:21:10 > 0:21:16How to get them? Moral force if we may, physical force if we must.
0:21:18 > 0:21:25In the climate of fear and hatred, people had to decide just where their loyalty lay.
0:21:25 > 0:21:29If you were on the right side of the tracks -
0:21:29 > 0:21:37owner of a cotton mill like this in Aircoats - you'd think the Chartists were just a mob misled by demagogues.
0:21:37 > 0:21:41Besides, who said capitalism was a funfair?
0:21:41 > 0:21:48As long as you kept your hands off the market, well, the market sooner or later would right itself.
0:21:48 > 0:21:55And the poor, the people who worked here, who were hungry now, would feed off the fat of the land tomorrow.
0:21:59 > 0:22:04On April 10th, 1848, a monster Chartist petition
0:22:04 > 0:22:11signed by nearly two million men and women, so huge it needed two hackney cabs to get it to Parliament,
0:22:11 > 0:22:13was brought to London.
0:22:13 > 0:22:23150,000 Chartists with bands, banners and green, red and white rosettes converged on Kennington Common
0:22:23 > 0:22:28for the biggest political rally in British history.
0:22:29 > 0:22:32The Government was ready for them.
0:22:32 > 0:22:39London was turned into a huge armed camp, with mounted guards, guns and even cannon posted
0:22:39 > 0:22:44at critical sites like the Tower of London and the Bank of England.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48Soldiers were posted on the Mall to prevent access to Buckingham Palace.
0:22:48 > 0:22:52The royal family had fled to the Isle of Wight.
0:22:54 > 0:22:58Faced with this immense display of strong-arm force,
0:22:58 > 0:23:04the leader, newspaper owner and MP Fergus O'Connor, had no choice.
0:23:04 > 0:23:09He gave orders that nobody should provoke the troops, however goaded,
0:23:09 > 0:23:12for the result would've been a bloodbath.
0:23:12 > 0:23:17Some of the younger firebrands thought it was a sell-out.
0:23:17 > 0:23:20But what was Fergus O'Connor supposed to do -
0:23:20 > 0:23:26unleash his people's army on the Queen's soldiers only to get them mown down?
0:23:26 > 0:23:33Now, what good would that have done the cause of the working people of Britain?
0:23:33 > 0:23:39And besides, just look at this photograph of the meeting on the common.
0:23:39 > 0:23:44The very first political photograph in our history.
0:23:44 > 0:23:49Not exactly about to storm the barricades, are they?
0:23:54 > 0:23:57It may have ended for the moment -
0:23:57 > 0:24:04the threat of the kind of revolution that had spread through European capitals in 1848 happening here too -
0:24:04 > 0:24:11but the dream of so many working people for somewhere decent to live, enough to eat,
0:24:11 > 0:24:15for a share in the Victorian bonanza, was as urgent as ever.
0:24:15 > 0:24:22If they weren't going to get it by armed revolt, then they would get it in the British way,
0:24:22 > 0:24:29in small but decisive steps, by coming together in self-sufficient communities.
0:24:32 > 0:24:37This is all that survives intact of those little pipe dreams,
0:24:37 > 0:24:43one of the cottages of the Chartist Land Company settlement at Great Dodford in Worcestershire.
0:24:43 > 0:24:46Founded in 1845,
0:24:46 > 0:24:52the Land Company was the brainchild of none other than Fergus O'Connor.
0:24:52 > 0:24:57It bought land, which it divided among its members into smallholdings
0:24:57 > 0:25:02meant to take people out of the industrial slums
0:25:02 > 0:25:06and back to the rural world of their forefathers.
0:25:06 > 0:25:11They'd get a few acres to grow their own food and make a small living.
0:25:11 > 0:25:18"Do or die" was the motto of the incoming settlers to places like Great Dodford,
0:25:18 > 0:25:21and their work was no picnic -
0:25:21 > 0:25:27breaking soil, planting hedges, making roads, with no certain outcome.
0:25:30 > 0:25:36But some were determined to make a go of it, especially Chartist women.
0:25:36 > 0:25:44Ann Wood, who lived in a cottage very much like this one, was just an Edinburgh charlady,
0:25:44 > 0:25:51but one with enough Scottish thrift and determination to save up £150 to put down for a lot at Great Dodford.
0:25:51 > 0:25:54That gave her the pick of the crop,
0:25:54 > 0:26:00and after settling at number 36 along with her two daughters,
0:26:00 > 0:26:06Ann did well enough, at any rate, to lead a long life, dying at 86.
0:26:07 > 0:26:11So when all the sound and fury had ebbed away,
0:26:11 > 0:26:16what seemed to count for most was making a home, not a revolution.
0:26:16 > 0:26:20Prince Albert himself understood this.
0:26:20 > 0:26:27In the year of the Great Exhibition, he commissioned and had built model lodgings for the working class.
0:26:27 > 0:26:30Later, they were rebuilt at Kennington,
0:26:30 > 0:26:35on the very site of the Chartist revolution that wasn't.
0:26:35 > 0:26:43And as the boom years of the 1850s replaced the hungry '40s, Britain had never seemed so middle class,
0:26:43 > 0:26:45starting with the monarchy.
0:26:45 > 0:26:52The thousands of photographic visiting-cards circulating the country
0:26:52 > 0:26:57showed the Queen and Prince Albert, not on their aristocratic high horse,
0:26:57 > 0:27:02but acting out the rituals of middle-class life.
0:27:02 > 0:27:05Respectable, reliable...
0:27:05 > 0:27:07even a little boring.
0:27:08 > 0:27:13Queen Victoria was to have nine children in all.
0:27:13 > 0:27:15And never had Britain had a monarch
0:27:15 > 0:27:20who went to such lengths to advertise her domestic pleasures to the nation.
0:27:24 > 0:27:27The stroll in the park.
0:27:28 > 0:27:31The romp with the children.
0:27:34 > 0:27:38The singsong round the tree at Christmas.
0:27:44 > 0:27:49And on the Isle of Wight, a modest little seaside getaway,
0:27:49 > 0:27:51Osborne House...
0:27:53 > 0:28:00..designed by Albert and relished by Victoria as an idyllic retreat from the pressures of rule.
0:28:08 > 0:28:15It was here, at last, that Albert, who'd been kept from meaningful public work,
0:28:15 > 0:28:18got HIS desk, sitting beside hers,
0:28:18 > 0:28:25from which he could direct his campaign to make industrial Britain a better as well as a richer place.
0:28:25 > 0:28:32To see them together beavering away, you'd suppose it was a perfect partnership.
0:28:33 > 0:28:41But not so perfect that this couple, in every other respect so mutually devoted, were spared all arguments.
0:28:41 > 0:28:46They had their spats just like the rest of us.
0:28:48 > 0:28:55Victoria is too hasty and passionate for me to be able often to speak of my difficulties.
0:28:55 > 0:29:00She will not hear me out, but flies into a rage and overwhelms me
0:29:00 > 0:29:05with reproaches and suspiciousness, want of trust, ambition, envy.
0:29:05 > 0:29:11For her part, too, Victoria wasn't above letting rip when she got too worked up.
0:29:11 > 0:29:19Single people, she'd occasionally let it be known, were often much better off than unhappily married couples
0:29:19 > 0:29:23forced to stay together by convention.
0:29:24 > 0:29:27All marriage is such a lottery.
0:29:27 > 0:29:32The happiness is always an exchange, although it may be a very happy one.
0:29:32 > 0:29:38Still, the poor woman is bodily and morally the husband's slave.
0:29:38 > 0:29:41That always sticks in my throat.
0:29:42 > 0:29:49Astonishingly, this echoed exactly the kind of thing coming from the mouth and the pen
0:29:49 > 0:29:55of two of the most daring critics of the Victorian conventions of marriage -
0:29:55 > 0:30:00John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, husband and wife for seven years,
0:30:00 > 0:30:05tortured lovers in a peculiar, Victorian way for longer,
0:30:05 > 0:30:08joint authors of On The Subjection Of Women.
0:30:10 > 0:30:17This was, don't forget, an age in which a woman's property automatically passed to her husband
0:30:17 > 0:30:19when they got married.
0:30:19 > 0:30:27Husbands had the right to beat their wives, as long as the cane was no thicker than their thumb,
0:30:27 > 0:30:30and to lock them up for refusing sex.
0:30:39 > 0:30:45In 1830, the philosopher John Stuart Mill went to a dinner party
0:30:45 > 0:30:48which changed his life forever.
0:30:48 > 0:30:54He was struck dumb by the vision of a swan throat and dark, enormous eyes.
0:30:56 > 0:30:59They belonged to one Harriet Taylor,
0:30:59 > 0:31:02writer, poet and unhappily married wife.
0:31:04 > 0:31:07Between the soup and the port,
0:31:07 > 0:31:16John and Harriet were swept away by an instantaneous knowledge that they'd found their true soulmates.
0:31:17 > 0:31:20But, being two serious intellectuals,
0:31:20 > 0:31:26Mill and Taylor's forbidden love couldn't just be a selfish private passion(!)
0:31:26 > 0:31:30It had to be thought out loud as a public issue.
0:31:30 > 0:31:37Their situation made only too clear the hypocrisy of the loveless Victorian marriage.
0:31:39 > 0:31:45In some slave codes, the slave could, under certain circumstances of ill-usage,
0:31:45 > 0:31:48legally compel the master to sell him.
0:31:48 > 0:31:56But no amount of ill-usage without adultery super-added will in England free a wife from HER tormentor.
0:31:56 > 0:32:03Surely there had to be another way out than adultery or suffering misery in silence?
0:32:06 > 0:32:12What had to be done was to expose marriages as the property transaction they often were,
0:32:12 > 0:32:18and then use education and law to enlighten and protect women.
0:32:21 > 0:32:28Taylor and Mill would have to wait 19 years for a chance to practise what they preached.
0:32:32 > 0:32:40In 1849, Harriet's unloved husband finally died, freeing the way for her to marry John Stuart Mill.
0:32:41 > 0:32:49But not before he formally renounced ALL the rights the law gave him over his wife's property and person.
0:32:52 > 0:32:56Their happiness was short-lived.
0:32:56 > 0:33:00Harriet Taylor died of TB in November 1858.
0:33:00 > 0:33:03But there would be an epitaph,
0:33:03 > 0:33:11all their ideas poured into On The Subjection Of Women, their book that MILL published in 1869.
0:33:12 > 0:33:17Happy and equal marriages were no longer its only concern.
0:33:17 > 0:33:25Women, who made up almost half the workforce of Britain, should have pay equal to their labour.
0:33:25 > 0:33:29And most breathtakingly of all, they should have the vote.
0:33:32 > 0:33:39It was a book whose ideas gave powerful momentum to the Women's Movement.
0:33:40 > 0:33:42After the Second Reform Act in 1867,
0:33:42 > 0:33:46almost all male householders had the vote,
0:33:46 > 0:33:52which made the fact that female householders hadn't seem glaringly unfair.
0:33:52 > 0:34:00Mill, himself an MP, had tried to argue their case, and even won the support of 73 other MPs.
0:34:00 > 0:34:03The vote was lost, of course,
0:34:03 > 0:34:05but the words had been spoken,
0:34:05 > 0:34:10and they were heard especially loudly in Mrs Gaskell's Manchester.
0:34:10 > 0:34:13The breakthrough had been made.
0:34:13 > 0:34:18a democracy worth the name could not be just for men.
0:34:22 > 0:34:27Queen Victoria may have had her doubts about unhappy marriages,
0:34:27 > 0:34:33but this was a violation of God's ordering of right relations between the sexes.
0:34:33 > 0:34:38She let it be known in no uncertain terms what she thought of...
0:34:38 > 0:34:44..this mad, wicked folly of women's rights with all its attendant horrors,
0:34:44 > 0:34:52on which our poor, feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.
0:34:53 > 0:34:58There WAS fit and proper work for women to do, Victoria allowed,
0:34:58 > 0:35:05but only the kind which used the qualities of tenderness which God had given to their sex.
0:35:05 > 0:35:10Nurses, for example, were rightly called sisters and matrons.
0:35:10 > 0:35:17But was it quite right for the Queen's own nephew to call one of them "Mammy"?
0:35:19 > 0:35:25Florence Nightingale may well have garnered the reputation back in Britain among civilians
0:35:25 > 0:35:28of the Angel of Mercy in the Crimea,
0:35:28 > 0:35:35but the women whom surviving SOLDIERS most adored, for the very good reason that she saw them through the worst,
0:35:35 > 0:35:40was the most forgotten and the most unlikely of Victoria's sisters.
0:35:40 > 0:35:43And her name was Mary Seacole.
0:35:43 > 0:35:46Mary Seacole was West Indian,
0:35:46 > 0:35:50the daughter of a Scotsman and a Jamaican woman.
0:35:50 > 0:35:57Largely self-taught, her Caribbean remedies became famous after they'd been shown to stop violent dysentery
0:35:57 > 0:36:02and to bring yellow fever and cholera victims back from death's door.
0:36:05 > 0:36:13When Britain joined the Crimean War in 1854, she tried to volunteer her services at the front.
0:36:15 > 0:36:20But Mary didn't exactly fit the profile of middle-class nurses.
0:36:20 > 0:36:24She was turned down by the likes of Nurse Nightingale.
0:36:26 > 0:36:32So Mary got herself to the Crimea under her own steam and with her own funds.
0:36:32 > 0:36:37And once she got there, she did something truly extraordinary.
0:36:37 > 0:36:42Mary Seacole built her "British Hotel" right on the front line.
0:36:42 > 0:36:48And it doubled up both as a refectory, feeding the boys about to go into action,
0:36:48 > 0:36:52and a recovery station for the sick and wounded.
0:36:55 > 0:37:02Every morning, she'd make up great vats of nutritious food like rice pudding, saddle up a pair of mules
0:37:02 > 0:37:06and ride into the heart of the action looking for the wounded,
0:37:06 > 0:37:11to whom she'd dole out food, hot tea, medicine
0:37:11 > 0:37:13but, most of all, motherly love.
0:37:15 > 0:37:22Mortars would whizz past the big, old woman trundling along the lines.
0:37:22 > 0:37:30Upon these occasions, those around would cry out, "Lie down, Mother, lie down!"
0:37:30 > 0:37:37And with very undignified and unladylike haste, I had to embrace the earth.
0:37:39 > 0:37:44After the war was over, the soldiers feted her at a charity gala.
0:37:45 > 0:37:50She'd become - briefly - an eminent Victorian.
0:37:53 > 0:38:01Suppose, though, women drawn to help the sick went one stage further and dreamed of being a doctor?
0:38:01 > 0:38:04Now, THAT was a different story.
0:38:05 > 0:38:12In 1860, Elizabeth Garrett enrolled as a surgical nurse at Middlesex Hospital.
0:38:12 > 0:38:15But her sights were set higher.
0:38:15 > 0:38:22In between the swabs and the bedpans she was looking carefully at surgical operations.
0:38:22 > 0:38:26And she was also cutting up body parts in her bedroom.
0:38:28 > 0:38:36This improvised education made her bold enough to take the hospital's medical, not nursing exams.
0:38:36 > 0:38:41And when the time came to publish the results, one E Garrett had come top.
0:38:43 > 0:38:48Ordered to keep the outrage secret, she went public instead.
0:38:48 > 0:38:52Nine years later, the French gave her an MD.
0:38:52 > 0:38:59And in 1874, the first medical college expressly for women was set up in London.
0:38:59 > 0:39:01For Victoria,
0:39:01 > 0:39:09the mere idea of slips of girls looking at, much less cutting up the naked bodies of dead men
0:39:09 > 0:39:11was an unthinkable indecency.
0:39:12 > 0:39:18But no doctor was of any help to her in the greatest crisis of her life.
0:39:19 > 0:39:25For in 1861, the same year Elizabeth Garrett cut her way into medicine,
0:39:25 > 0:39:28Albert contracted typhoid
0:39:28 > 0:39:33which, after a few months of horrifyingly swift deterioration,
0:39:33 > 0:39:37ended in his death in December.
0:39:40 > 0:39:47Everything in those last weeks became suddenly invested with an almost religious significance.
0:39:47 > 0:39:52Here is the last book read to Albert, Scott's Peveril Of The Peak,
0:39:52 > 0:39:55and on the flyleaf the Queen has written,
0:39:55 > 0:40:02"This book was read up to the mark on page 81, to my beloved husband during his fatal illness,
0:40:02 > 0:40:07"and within three days of its terrible termination."
0:40:09 > 0:40:13You turn to page 81, and here's how it reads...
0:40:13 > 0:40:20"He heard the sound of voices, but they ceased to convey any impression to his understanding;
0:40:20 > 0:40:28"and in a few minutes, he was faster asleep than he'd ever been in the whole course of his life."
0:40:30 > 0:40:33Victoria buried her beloved Albert
0:40:33 > 0:40:39in the Italianate mausoleum she built at Frogmore in Windsor Great Park.
0:40:49 > 0:40:54Albert's death threw Victoria into a paroxysm of grief.
0:40:54 > 0:41:00Not for her the stoical acceptance of the inscrutable will of the Almighty.
0:41:00 > 0:41:07She had lost not only her co-ruler but her helpmate. And vanished too was her domestic idyll.
0:41:07 > 0:41:15At the abyss of her misery, she must have thought that all chance of contentment had gone.
0:41:16 > 0:41:22My life as a happy one is ended. The world is gone for me.
0:41:22 > 0:41:27If I must live on, and I will do nothing to make me worse than I am,
0:41:27 > 0:41:32it is henceforth for our poor, fatherless children,
0:41:32 > 0:41:37for my unhappy country which has lost all in losing him.
0:41:40 > 0:41:45Death was an immense presence in Victorian life,
0:41:45 > 0:41:52perhaps because it was the one conquest denied to the soldiers, the engineers, the captains of industry
0:41:52 > 0:41:57who seemed to be able to conquer everything else.
0:41:57 > 0:42:02If they couldn't stop their loved ones from going to their graves,
0:42:02 > 0:42:07they could at least create the illusion, in marble and photographs,
0:42:07 > 0:42:11that they were still alongside those who mourned them.
0:42:13 > 0:42:18This, in her distraught, inconsolable grief, Victoria knew how to do.
0:42:18 > 0:42:21With religious devotion,
0:42:21 > 0:42:25she set out Albert's shaving equipment every morning...
0:42:27 > 0:42:32..and fresh evening clothes and a clean towel every evening.
0:42:33 > 0:42:38Missing his physical presence, she slept with his nightgown by her side.
0:42:43 > 0:42:51The exuberant, headstrong young woman shrank into the hard shell of a forbidding, inconsolable widow
0:42:51 > 0:42:58for whom the least sign of merriment was a betrayal of Albert's sainted memory.
0:42:58 > 0:43:06She seemed, in a way which no-one accustomed to the strong-minded Queen could ever have imagined,
0:43:06 > 0:43:11somehow no longer in charge of either herself or of the country.
0:43:13 > 0:43:19Victoria's sense of moral calling, so strong from the beginning of her reign,
0:43:19 > 0:43:24had become so dependent on Albert the Good's judgement
0:43:24 > 0:43:30that now he was gone, she seemed at a loss about how and where to exercise it.
0:43:30 > 0:43:35It never occurred to her that women alone, either as widows or spinsters,
0:43:35 > 0:43:42might be able to do good by themselves - to make a life, even a career, on their own.
0:43:45 > 0:43:49If she wanted to see how this COULD be done,
0:43:49 > 0:43:57all she needed to do was to take her pony trap a mile or two down the road from Osborne to Freshwater
0:43:57 > 0:44:04to visit someone who, though neither widow nor spinster, was very much her own woman.
0:44:06 > 0:44:10The photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.
0:44:11 > 0:44:16Since Victoria was herself an avid collector of photographs,
0:44:16 > 0:44:23she might have been curious about this eccentric, half-French woman's notorious darkroom.
0:44:25 > 0:44:31For Julia Cameron, photography was not just an amateur hobby.
0:44:31 > 0:44:38The poetic lyricism of her photographs disguises the hard need she had to make some money.
0:44:42 > 0:44:48Worse, she seemed, perversely, to glory in the male mess of camera work -
0:44:48 > 0:44:53flouncing around in the converted hen-house that was her studio,
0:44:53 > 0:44:58her dresses and hands stained with black silver nitrate,
0:44:58 > 0:45:02conscripting men and women models like a recruiting sergeant-major
0:45:02 > 0:45:07and bellowing terrifyingly at them if they moved before they were told.
0:45:08 > 0:45:16Needless to say, the men who ran the Royal Photographic Society refused to take her seriously.
0:45:16 > 0:45:19Admiring the enthusiasm of Mrs Cameron,
0:45:19 > 0:45:22the Committee regrets
0:45:22 > 0:45:29they cannot concur with the lavish praise bestowed on her productions by the non-photographic press,
0:45:29 > 0:45:36feeling convinced that she will herself adopt a different mode of representing her poetic ideas
0:45:36 > 0:45:41when she has made herself acquainted with the capabilities of the art.
0:45:41 > 0:45:48What they MEANT, of course, was that a soft woman couldn't be expected to master machinery, chemicals,
0:45:48 > 0:45:53the hard technology of the job, let alone make a career out of it -
0:45:53 > 0:45:58despite Julia's obvious success at both.
0:45:58 > 0:46:04But some of the most powerful and intelligent of the Victorian great'n'good -
0:46:04 > 0:46:08Tennyson, Carlyle,
0:46:08 > 0:46:13and astronomer Sir John Herschel - who HAD obediently posed,
0:46:13 > 0:46:17were not deceived by the poetic light of her work.
0:46:17 > 0:46:22They embraced her as the greatest portraitist of her age.
0:46:27 > 0:46:33Julia's triumph in making a profession as an artist must have been noticed
0:46:33 > 0:46:40by all the young women of the 1870s and 1880s who wanted more for themselves
0:46:40 > 0:46:43than a destiny as wife and mother.
0:46:49 > 0:46:56After Girton College, the first Oxbridge college for women, opened its doors near Cambridge in 1873
0:46:56 > 0:47:01they had, for the first time, somewhere that would educate them -
0:47:01 > 0:47:06liberate them if they chose - from middle-class domesticity.
0:47:07 > 0:47:12But even as they drank in knowledge behind the red walls of Girton,
0:47:12 > 0:47:17some of those young women longed to get beyond the cloister.
0:47:20 > 0:47:27The old ways of "women's useful work", teaching, preaching, nursing, were no longer enough.
0:47:27 > 0:47:33Nor was just being an educated designer of the House Beautiful.
0:47:34 > 0:47:40They were drawn instead, as Elizabeth Gaskell had been a generation earlier,
0:47:40 > 0:47:47to the UGLINESS everywhere in a Britain feeling once more the strain of economic crisis.
0:47:47 > 0:47:54Some even decided to make that new home in the places most shocking to their parents' generation -
0:47:54 > 0:47:58in the slums of the industrial cities -
0:47:58 > 0:48:05to steep themselves in the dirt and anger of their poor, abused sisters...
0:48:07 > 0:48:10..to face up to harsh truths,
0:48:10 > 0:48:15the kind spelled out by the young George Bernard Shaw.
0:48:17 > 0:48:21Your slaves are beyond caring for your cries.
0:48:21 > 0:48:24They breed like rabbits
0:48:24 > 0:48:32and their poverty breeds filth, ugliness, dishonesty, disease, obscenity, drunkenness and murder.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39The bravest of this new generation
0:48:39 > 0:48:44could even face head-on the most unpalatable truths,
0:48:44 > 0:48:48like that link between breeding and destitution.
0:48:48 > 0:48:55Annie Besant was the kind of do-gooder clergyman's wife unthinkable a generation earlier,
0:48:55 > 0:48:59and still unthinkable to the likes of the Queen.
0:48:59 > 0:49:02Annie Besant scandalised the country
0:49:02 > 0:49:06by publishing contraception advice for working people.
0:49:06 > 0:49:13Such impertinence would not go unpunished, however, and Annie found herself the victim of a court order.
0:49:13 > 0:49:17She lost custody of her daughter to her former husband.
0:49:17 > 0:49:22An unforgiving time for women judged as unfit mothers.
0:49:22 > 0:49:24But nothing would stop her crusading.
0:49:25 > 0:49:29Searching around for a woman's cause, Annie found one
0:49:29 > 0:49:36in the teenage match-girls who worked amidst phosphorus fumes for Bryant & May in East London.
0:49:36 > 0:49:41They were paid just between four and ten shillings a week.
0:49:41 > 0:49:46And if they had dirty feet or an untidy bench they were fined,
0:49:46 > 0:49:50taking more money out of their already pathetic wages.
0:49:52 > 0:49:59Most horrifying of all, the girls ran the constant risk of contracting the hideously disfiguring "phossy jaw"
0:49:59 > 0:50:07since Bryant & May persisted in the use of phosphorus, which other match companies had given up.
0:50:07 > 0:50:13At the same time, the company was paying huge dividends to its shareholders,
0:50:13 > 0:50:20a disproportionate number of whom - Annie enjoyed revealing - were the clergy.
0:50:20 > 0:50:24Annie wrote an article about the plight of the match-girls
0:50:24 > 0:50:27for her campaigning newspaper, The Link.
0:50:27 > 0:50:34Together with fellow Socialist campaigner Herbert Burrows, she distributed copies of it
0:50:34 > 0:50:37at the gates of the factory.
0:50:37 > 0:50:41The owners of Bryant & May threatened the girls with instant dismissal
0:50:41 > 0:50:48if they didn't sign a document repudiating the article and the journalists.
0:50:48 > 0:50:54But instead of signing, the girls went en masse to Annie and Burrows with their story. They told her...
0:50:54 > 0:50:59You had spoken up for us. We weren't going back on you.
0:50:59 > 0:51:02A strike committee was formed.
0:51:02 > 0:51:09Besant and Burrows promised to pay the wages of any girls dismissed for their action.
0:51:09 > 0:51:15George Bernard Shaw volunteered as the cashier of the strike fund. 1,400 girls came out.
0:51:15 > 0:51:22The company eventually settled, and Annie Besant and the girls were triumphant.
0:51:22 > 0:51:26Hailed as the working girls' champion,
0:51:26 > 0:51:32she was immediately sought after by all sorts of other women aggrieved at their treatment.
0:51:32 > 0:51:39In 1888, Annie campaigned for election to the Tower Hamlets' School Board
0:51:39 > 0:51:43in a dogcart festooned with red ribbons.
0:51:43 > 0:51:48She won in a landslide victory, polling 15,000 votes.
0:51:48 > 0:51:55Even before they had the vote, women showed they could, and would, win local elections.
0:52:01 > 0:52:04Queen Victoria was not in fact blind
0:52:04 > 0:52:12to the miseries which so appalled the young women social workers of the 1880s and 1890s.
0:52:12 > 0:52:18Shaken by some of the revelations in The Bitter Cry Of Outcast London,
0:52:18 > 0:52:23she actually pressed Gladstone's government to spend more of its time on the problem of housing.
0:52:23 > 0:52:27And her insistence produced a Royal Commission.
0:52:28 > 0:52:33But whether she wanted to see it or COULD have seen it,
0:52:33 > 0:52:38there were, in the warm Jubilee summer of 1887, two Britains.
0:52:38 > 0:52:42Nearly a third of able-bodied men were unemployed.
0:52:42 > 0:52:46Now, thousands of the jobless were also homeless,
0:52:46 > 0:52:49sleeping rough in parks and squares,
0:52:49 > 0:52:55some of them even in open coffins - the undead of Underclass Albion.
0:52:58 > 0:53:03But, of course, the Queen was kept well away from all that.
0:53:03 > 0:53:08What she saw were 30,000 poor schoolchildren in Hyde Park
0:53:08 > 0:53:13who each got a meat pie, a piece of cake and an orange
0:53:13 > 0:53:17to celebrate the great day of her Jubilee.
0:53:18 > 0:53:24The children sang God Save the Queen...somewhat out of tune.
0:53:26 > 0:53:34It was the kind of thing which brought a smile - yes, a smile - on the face of the old Queen.
0:53:37 > 0:53:41It would be like this for the rest of her life -
0:53:41 > 0:53:45the country bathed in summer evening light,
0:53:45 > 0:53:48the faces well-scrubbed and dutiful,
0:53:48 > 0:53:53the old lady at last something like the contented matriarch,
0:53:53 > 0:54:00the grandmother of the Empire - the thrones of Europe filled with her offspring.
0:54:00 > 0:54:05There was, of course, someone missing from this national family photo.
0:54:05 > 0:54:12In the Abbey, amidst all the splendour, Victoria suddenly felt a pang.
0:54:13 > 0:54:18I sat alone - Oh! - without my beloved husband,
0:54:18 > 0:54:23for whom this would have been such a proud day.
0:54:24 > 0:54:29Victoria would have to wait another 14 years, until 1901,
0:54:29 > 0:54:33before she would be reunited with him...
0:54:33 > 0:54:37..to whom the nation and I owe so much.
0:54:38 > 0:54:42Her long-suffering secretary, Frederick Ponsonby,
0:54:42 > 0:54:48said there was nothing Victoria enjoyed so much as arranging funerals.
0:54:48 > 0:54:51And her own was no exception.
0:54:57 > 0:55:01So she ordered a WHITE lying in state and funeral for herself.
0:55:05 > 0:55:08In her hands was a silver crucifix,
0:55:08 > 0:55:13her white dress decorated with cheerful sprays of spring flowers.
0:55:15 > 0:55:19There was a touch of Miss Havisham about this,
0:55:19 > 0:55:23the 80-year-old, flower-bedecked virgin bride.
0:55:23 > 0:55:26But not JILTED by her beloved...
0:55:26 > 0:55:28going to join him.
0:55:29 > 0:55:36When Albert's memorial effigy had been ordered from the sculptor Marochetti in 1862,
0:55:36 > 0:55:41Victoria insisted on hers being made at the same time,
0:55:41 > 0:55:46and with her appearance as it was when he had been taken from her,
0:55:46 > 0:55:51so that they would be reunited - at least in marble - at the same age,
0:55:51 > 0:55:54in the glowing prime of their union.
0:55:57 > 0:56:04The trouble was, no-one could remember where they'd put the statue made 40 years before.
0:56:04 > 0:56:06It had in fact been walled up
0:56:06 > 0:56:11in one of the cavities of a renovated room in Windsor Castle.
0:56:13 > 0:56:18Eventually it was found and laid next to Albert, as per the Queen's orders.
0:56:18 > 0:56:25And there she is, as if the clocks had stopped along with the heart of the Prince Consort.
0:56:26 > 0:56:34But they hadn't, of course. Victoria might lie next to her beloved dressed as a medieval princess,
0:56:34 > 0:56:41but he, of all people, had known it had been PROGRESS which had been the mainspring of her reign.
0:56:41 > 0:56:48Albert had done his best to see that it had been a force for goodness as well as greatness,
0:56:48 > 0:56:53that the surging movement of the machine age would be held in check
0:56:53 > 0:56:58by the moral anchorage of the Victorian home.
0:56:59 > 0:57:07Britain's women - Victoria's sisters and daughters - were all supposed to have been grateful for this,
0:57:07 > 0:57:11to bask in the warmth of the hearth they tended.
0:57:11 > 0:57:18But those cosy fires kindled yearnings that couldn't be contained by a placid domesticity.
0:57:18 > 0:57:23Those little liberators, the cheque book, the latchkey and the bicycle
0:57:23 > 0:57:27beckoned over the doorstep... and into the street.
0:57:29 > 0:57:34And you couldn't tell any longer just how the girls would turn out.
0:57:42 > 0:57:47Riding with the body of the Queen from London to Windsor
0:57:47 > 0:57:52was the widow of one of her Viceroys of India, Lady Lytton.
0:57:52 > 0:57:55Just eight years later,
0:57:55 > 0:57:59HER daughter Constance, imprisoned as a Suffragette,
0:57:59 > 0:58:05would make her statement about the future of women in Britain...
0:58:07 > 0:58:13..by carving, with a piece of broken enamel from a hairpin, the letter V
0:58:13 > 0:58:15into the flesh of her breast.
0:58:20 > 0:58:23But it wasn't V for Victoria.
0:58:23 > 0:58:25It was V for votes.
0:58:32 > 0:58:41Why not join the debate and get involved in British history on the BBC History website?
0:58:41 > 0:58:50You can take your interest further and get to grips with the sources that have shaped history.
0:58:57 > 0:59:01Subtitles by E Kane BBC Broadcast: 2002
0:59:01 > 0:59:05E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk