The Guardian’s review on 2nd January of BBC2′s “Queen Victoria’s Children” included the following parenting advice on “how to bring up children the Victoria and Albert way”:

If she lies I will beat her. I will teach her mathematics and to play the piano, and if she gets a sum or note wrong I shall beat her some more. And she will get many sums wrong and many notes wrong…so I will beat her and beat her and beat her. Not because I dislike of resent her… but because I love her and want to do the right thing by her, as well as to be seen by other people to be doing the right thing.

Oh, how I want to play an extended Victorian father / daughter scene, over the course of a weekend. My house, being Edwardian, is a tad too modern, but who cares! Not that I know anyone who’d actually be up for it, but the idea so appeals…!

 

PS Actually, in the original review it was ‘him’ not ‘her’ – the son in question being the future Edward VII. But I can transpose the gender, right?