Today is the day I have reigned longer, by a day, than any English sovereign”, wrote Queen Victoria in her journal on 23 September 1896. At the age of 77, the diminutive Queen had overtaken her grandfather George III’s record of 21,644 days on the throne (that’s 59 years, 96 days plus 13 extra leap-year days).
Despite Victoria’s insistence that the occasion should not be celebrated publicly, her delighted subjects could not be silenced. “People of all kinds and ranks, from every part of the kingdom, sent congratulatory telegrams”, she recorded in her diary. These, she continued “were all most loyally expressed and some very prettily...”