This book reveals Queen Victoria's rich experiences during her nine little-known visits to the Cote d'Azur. It contains lively anecdotes about those who accompanied her, including her dour Scottish gillie, John Brown, and the troublesome Indian Munshi. Brown - who did not like the Riviera and thoght Irish revolutionaries were plotting to assassinate the Queen there - amazed the locals by wearing a kilt together with a topee. The Queen played a key role in making the Riviera the leading holiday resort in Europe, and she had a major impact on the economy of the area. She arrived there for the first time in Spring 1882 when she was 62. That region, which she called a "paradise of nature", wrought a transformation to the last two decades of her life. Whenever she arrived on French soil, her face lit up and she shed many of the inhibitions of her life in England. She visited the Riviera more often than any other part of continental Europe. "Oh, if only I were at Nice, I should recover," she said as she was dying. Her guests there included extraordinary European royalty, such as the reprobate Leopold II of the Belgians, who married a former prostitute on his death-bed, and his daughters Louise and Stephanie, central characters in two of the greatest royal scandals of the 19th century. The text is illustrated with coloured French postcards making fun of the Queen (including one of her riding on a bottle of gin), and posters of the "belle epoque".
