The unhappy motherhood of Queen Victoria

SIR – It’s true that Queen Victoria neither liked babies nor liked having them, which is why her dear sweet husband oversaw their children’s upbringing (and took over most monarchical duties). However, the problem wasn’t that she needed a “better attitude”, as James Hughesonslow suggests (Letters, August 28). Her problem was her mental health.

Victoria’s states of mind are well chronicled. She was prone to fits of hysteria and severe post-natal depression. Her physician once wrote: “I feel at times uneasy regarding the queen’s mind, unless she is kept quiet ... the time will come when she is in danger”. George III was meant to have died insane, and this clearly haunted his descendants.

After growing up isolated and poorly educated, Victoria was what her own mother and health had made her. This didn’t mean that she was a bad person or to blame for the world atrocities that followed. Emilie Lamplough

Trowbridge, Wiltshire