Queen Victoria's Empire

Abstract

Victorian Britain has recently been treated by no less than three major historical television and video productions without even counting A& E's miniseries Victoria and Albert, which is clearly more love story than history. Simon Schama 's A History of Britain, a BBC and History Channel production, carries the story into the Victorian era where he focuses on emerging concepts of gender and family life and the hubris of liberal humanism and colonialism. Patrick Allitt of Emory University delivers a series of lectures for The Teaching Company that focus on the achievements of Victorian Britain as well as the strange internal contradictions of a time that seems remarkably close to our own in so many ways. PBS 'sentry in the current Victorian video derby is Queen Victoria's Empire, part of the Empires Collection that includes Egypt's Golden Empire, The Greeks, The Roman Empire in the First Century, Islam: Empire of Faith, and Napoleon.