This book performs well as an account of factors in Prince Albert's education and decisions while serving as spouse of Queen Victoria. Whether or not the case needed to be made, the book persuasively argues that Prince Albert was, in many ways, the ideal constitutional monarch in his time, despite - sometimes in the face of - his lack of official title and position.

Of Albert's psychology the reader learns little except in curiously veiled asides (the author references the "poison" of his father's court numerous times before beginning, at last, to hint that the poison had something to do with his father's philandering) and tantalizing selections from Albert's letters. That the author has an exhaustive knowledge of his subject, the reader cannot doubt; in fact, a little editing would not have hurt the book (we do not, strictly speaking, need to know how many letters Victoria wrote her eldest daughter to understand Albert's role either as shadow monarch or as doting father). It is, on the whole, somewhat disappointing that the author defends Albert's character against the anti-German sentiment of the Prince's time, shows him to be a careful spouse of a sharp-tongued Queen, and permits the reader some glimpses of assessment by discussing whether Albert romanticized his childhood, but does not delve deeply into Albert's closeness with the Queen other than with a rather singular phrase (about the first meeting of Albert and Victoria after she became Queen: "erotic lightning struck") and a catalogue of art works given to each other, but contrasted (again with little analysis) to notes Albert wrote Victoria in lieu of spoken arguments. Was he passive-aggressive, Author, or simply overcautious after the undescribed sinister atmosphere of his father's house?

That the author grasps the larger forces at work in Europe leading up to the Crimean war and, later, the first World War, the reader cannot deny; the reader can, however, complain that these tangled vectors were difficult to compute from the often non-chronological, indeed sometimes discursive, sequence of the author's paragraphs. The affair of the Trent and the uprisings in India get less, but equally confusing, treatment. It would have gone a long way to increasing the ease with which a reader could grasp the conflicts as well as the principal players in Parliament and abroad if one or two distinguishing personal details helped the reader to differentiate, for example, Albert's grandmothers, or assorted military leaders after Wellington's death, or mentioned but ultimately minor characters like Albert's secretarial staff, for whom the author shows the Prince and Queen grieving but for whose reasons for such grief the author offers not much explanation.

Coverage of Albert's contributions to science and industry was quite complete throughout the book, and ultimately, the American reader not searching for information about one particularly effective early modern method of serving as monarch in a constitutional nation would benefit best from an understanding of how Albert hauled Britain, despite some resistance, into the age of industry and technology by supporting education and encouraging ingenuity. The "steampunk" craze, in fact, would seem to be attributable to Albert's own efforts to make science a British pursuit. His efforts to promote constitutional and liberal government continent-wide, even when they failed, ought to be examined closely by modern people in any country with commercial corporations of the type growing today. The author's conclusion, that Albert's like was not to be seen again and that his singular life shaped the modern world, is - without violating rules of sentiment - quite touching.

On the whole, however, I believe I'll hunt for a different biography that might elucidate the hinted tensions and psychologies, explicate the factions in Parliament at the time, and maybe, just slightly, titillate my curiosity about the emotional life to which the author of this book referred but of which he showed disappointingly little. A model of a leader is a grand thing to give the world, especially to a world that needs a new Prince Albert, but to begin to think about how one might possibly construct a new enlightened, interested, forward-thinking leader, one needs to know more of the dimensions of (if the author is correct) the best man to fit the crown he never wore. ( )

A sympathetic, even admiring, overview of Prince Albert's life, which takes the plausible view that, while he was alive, especially in the later years of his time with Victoria, he was in fact uncrowned king. A good read. ( )