Date:17/12/2004 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/12/17/stories/2004121702091400.htm

International

Queen Victoria's letter discovered

London: A newly-discovered letter from Queen Victoria, revealing her innermost feelings for her Highland servant John Brown, reignited speculation on Wednesday that their relationship was more than platonic. The handwritten note, uncovered by accident by a PhD student in the family archives of Lord Cranbrook, one of Queen Victoria's ministers, in the record office of the English county of Suffolk indicates just how distraught she was when Brown died in March 1883. The letter was revealed in an article in History Today magazine by its discoverer Bendor Grosvenor from the University of East Anglia, England. The letter is written in the Queen's nearly indecipherable scrawl and speaks of her ``present, unbounded grief for the loss of the best, most devoted of servants and truest and dearest of friends.'' Speculation was rife about Queen Victoria's relationship with Brown, following the death of her husband Albert in 1861. The Queen had left instructions that when she died, a lock of Brown's hair, his photograph, and some letters should be placed in her coffin. —