Contrary to popular belief, Queen Victoria wasn't a sour old matron, but a passionate, intelligent and surprising woman, as actress Prunella Scales portrays her. Steve Pratt joins in Looking For Victoria.

Actress Prunella Scales is used to moving in royal circles. She portrayed the present Queen in Alan Bennett's stage play Single Spies, and her association with another monarch, Victoria, goes back nearly 40 years.

The actress has been playing the long-serving queen in a one-woman show, An Evening With Queen Victoria, all over the world since 1964.

Much of the entertainment is based on the journal that the queen kept every day from the age of 13 to 81. And the evidence shows that she was very different to the popular image of her as the sour-faced "We are not amused" ruler.

"When I first read her diaries I just freaked," says Scales. "They are so entertaining and informative and extremely funny."

Scales not only portrays Victoria but hears stories and academic discoveries about her as the presenter of Looking For Victoria, BBC1's two-part drama-documentary beginning on Monday.

She also visits some of the houses and palaces to which she had access after becoming Queen a month after her 18th birthday. The first programme takes her through childhood to marriage and the premature death of her husband.

Her early life was full of drama - from the race to get her mother to England in time for the birth in 1819, to her father's sudden death from pneumonia, when she was only eight months old.

'I think that all her life, she had a very passionate nature and a very pronounced capacity for emotional dependence. Her relationship with her mother was ambiguous and unsatisfactory, and she never saw her father," says Scales.

Her teenage years were lonely and increasingly traumatic as her mother and the scheming courtier, Sir John Conroy, tried to manipulate her actions.

"People think of her as this elderly, very stern, humourless old matron. And, of course, the death of her husband did put her nearly out of her mind for many years, but basically she was a very lively, intelligent and surprising woman," she says.

As for Queen Victoria being a symbol of the age of sexual repression, the actress points out that she had nine children under 15 - "so she must have been a bit keen". The entry in her journal, the morning after her marriage, reads: "Oh, what heavenly bliss".

The programme also claims to shed new light on her relationship with John Brown, the Highland servant who became her constant companion. There's evidence, in the form of letters, indicating a private marriage.

Scales doesn't think that matters that much. "There's much more to Victoria than whether she slept with John Brown," she says.

As well as Scales playing the Queen, looking back over her life, the series features a cast of actors including Timothy West (who's married to Scales in real life), Charles Dance and Andrew Sachs.

As your starter for Looking For Victoria, here are ten things you probably didn't known about her:

* She was the daughter of a soldier who retained a lifelong fascination with all things military.

l During her childhood she was placed in the care of an obsessive governess, Baroness Lehzen, who believed she should be brought up in isolation.

* On her succession to the throne, Victoria sacked courtier Sir John Conroy, who'd schemed against her, and banished her heartless mother to a distant wing of Buckingham Palace.

* She didn't fall in love at first sight with Prince Albert - it was his brother, Ernest, who first took her fancy. "Ernest is my favourite although Albert is much handsomer and clever," she wrote in her journal.

* She had an extremely passionate relationship with her husband, Prince Albert. She wrote in her diary that he'd gone off to inspect the troops wearing only his cashmere breeches - with nothing underneath.

* She gave birth to nine children in the space of 16 years. She liked to discuss her state of pregnancy in every detail, much to the alarm of her physicians.

* She took an active part in state affairs, leading Gladstone to remark: "She alone was enough to kill a man."

* In later life, she became obsessed with all things Indian, surrounding herself with Indian decor and Indian servants. One, Abdul Karim, became very close to the Queen, much to the horror of her courtiers.

* Keeping up with new technology was hard for her. "We are not much impressed," she said on being presented with a telephone.

* She remained loyal to her servants, who stayed with her into old age. One banquet guest complained of the "infernal clatteration of noises" as the footmen stumbled into one another and sent their silver platters crashing to the floor.

* Looking For Victoria begins on BBC1 on Monday at 9pm.

Published: 23/10/2003