Victoria’s book gives a personal royal account

A GILDED manuscript based on a best-selling book by Queen Victoria in which she reveals her thoughts on surviving a carriage accident and tasting haggis for the first time is to go on show in Scotland.

Compiled from the monarch’s diaries, the book, entitled More Leaves From The Journal Of A Life In The Highlands, From 1862 To 1882, provides a glimpse into royal life at Balmoral.

It became an instant hit with readers after being published in 1884 and the following year a Persian translation covered in dazzling gold illumination was created for presentation to her.

That handwritten translation will go on display in Scotland for the first time later this month at the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh as part of a new Royal Collection exhibition looking at gold.

Queen Victoria’s book followed an earlier publication covering her life from 1848 to 1861.

The later book, beginning less than a year after her husband Prince Albert’s death, reflects the queen’s grief but also how her “sad and suffering heart was soothed and cheered by the excursions and incidents it recounts”.

After Albert’s death, the queen spent up to four months a year at Balmoral, her “dear paradise in the Highlands”, recording her appreciation of the natural beaut y of the landscape.

In 1865 she travelled to Dunkeld in Perthshire to stay with the dowager duchess of Atholl.

She wrote that she was served “several Scotch dishes, two soups and the celebrated haggis which I tried last night and really liked very much”.

The exhibition, Gold, is at the gallery from March 27 to July 26.