Offers an analysis of the British Empire during the time immediately following the death of its longest reigning monarch For Packard, the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 represented the closing of the golden age of imperial Britain. Still embroiled in the Boer War, which was draining both strength from and confidence in the imperial ideal, the British empire would never be quite the same in the years after Victoria's death. Packard, who has written extensively on other royal families, here deftly interweaves a chronicle of Victoria's death watch with the larger issues on the world stage. His portrayals of members of the queen's vast family, particularly her son the future Edward VII and her grandson the German kaiser William II, are fascinating. Unfortunately, Victoria herself is seen here as a rather rigid and certainly uninspiring figure. Those who take a jaded view of royalty are bound to ask what all the fuss was about; however, confirmed Anglophiles should find even the more trivial details about the royal family to be enlightening and quite interesting. Jay Freeman