An astounding eight people personally attacked Queen Victoria during her long reign. Their pistols either failed to fire or missed altogether, although one assailant - Robert Pate - managed to strike her across the forehead with a finely wrought cane. Remarkably all eight lived to tell their tales, and were incarcerated in mental asylums, deported to Australia, and in a few cases eventually released into society again.
In following these odd, mostly troubled, and fascinating characters , Shooting Victoria opens up a whole new window onto Victorian England providing one of the most detailed portraits of the era so far. In investigating Victorian attitudes to madness, crime and criminals, it reveals new depths to citizens and monarch alike, uncovering cogs and levers driving the age that have remained hidden for decades.
Murphy shows how these forgotten, often misguided souls effected a change in history. Their attacks on Victoria galvanised her brave desire to face them down by being a more public-facing ruler than her forebears, and laid the groundwork for the monarchy as we know it.
