The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History

by Roland Perry

Long before her successful marriage to Prince Albert, Princess Victoria had an affair with the dashing Scottish 13th Lord Elphinstone. After the liaison was exposed, Elphinstone was banished to India, appointed Governor of Madras, which allowed Victoria's mother to engineer a royal union for her with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. After five years of pining for Elphinstone, Victoria finally gave in and married Albert. Despite a successful marriage, Victoria never forgot Elphinstone and after a decade in India he returned to her side as Lord-in-Waiting at Court. He only left her to take up the critical role of Governor of Bombay during the Indian Uprising of 1857. Elphinstone died soon after in June 1860 from a fever. Many attempts were made to bury the memory of Lord Elphinstone, his long-running relationship with the monarch and his grand service for the Empire, but Victoria recorded it in letters to her confidant, her first-born, the Princess 'Vicky'. The revealing correspondence, like a ticking time-bomb, sat in a German castle attic until 1945 when King George VI, Victoria's great-grandson, sent a courtier, MI5 operative Anthony Blunt, on seven special missions to gather the letters.

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About the author

Professor Roland Perry (born 11 October 1946) is a Melbourne-based author best known for his books on history, especially Australia in the two world wars. His Monash: The Outsider Who Won The War, won the Fellowship of Australian Writers' 'Melbourne University Publishing Award' in 2004. The judges described it as 'a model of the biographer's art. In the Queen's Birthday Honours of June 2011, Perry was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia 'for services to literature as an author.In October 2011, Monash University awarded Perry a Fellowship for 'high achievement as a writer, author, film producer and journalist.His sports books include biographies of Sir Donald Bradman, Steve Waugh, Keith Miller and Shane Warne. Perry has written on espionage, specialising in the British Cambridge Ring of Russian agents. He has also published three works of fiction and produced more than 20 documentary films. Perry has been a member of the National Archives of Australia Advisory Council since 2006.

In late 2012 Perry accepted an adjunct appointment at Monash University as a Professor, with the title ‘Writer-in-Residence’ in the University’s Arts Faculty.