Overweight and rather whiffy, the REAL young Victoria: New book claims Lord Melbourne dropped hints to the monarch about her personal hygiene and gave her slimming tips 

  • Flirtation between Victoria and Lord Melbourne in ITV series gripped viewers 
  • Book suggests Lord Melbourne encouraged Queen to only eat when hungry
  • Historian Kathryn Hughes says he also encouraged young royal to wash more  

By Tammy Hughes For The Daily Mail

Published: 19:14 EST, 18 January 2017 | Updated: 19:58 EST, 18 January 2017

Queen Victoria and Lord Melbourne were played by Jenna Coleman and Rufus Sewell in the hit ITV series 

The flirtation between the young Queen Victoria and Lord Melbourne in the hit ITV series had viewers gripped.

But there were many undignified exchanges between the young monarch and her prime minister that certainly weren’t re-enacted by Jenna Coleman and Rufus Sewell.

A new book reveals that Queen Victoria had a rather pungent body odour problem that forced Lord Melbourne to drop hints about her personal hygiene.

He also offered her tips on weight loss after the Queen ballooned in size and could no longer fit into any of her clothes.

Historian Kathryn Hughes writes in Victorians Undone that Lord Melbourne ‘did his best’ to try to encourage the Queen to only eat when she was hungry.

But she snapped at him that she would be ‘eating all day long’ if she took his unwanted advice.

He also suggested taking long walks but Victoria ‘triumphantly fished out the example of Donna Maria of Portugal, exactly the same age as her, who walked all the time and resembled a pudding’.

It was perhaps unsurprising that the Queen had piled on the pounds, writes Hughes, as: ‘In addition to eating too often and too fast, she had taken to gulping down prodigious amounts of alcohol at mealtimes.’

As well as advising the Queen on matters of national importance and body image Lord Melbourne was also saddled with unenviable task of encouraging the young Royal to wash more.

A new book suggests Lord Melbourne dropped hints about the young royal's personal hygiene and tried to encourage the Queen to only eat when she was hungry

Miss Hughes writes: ‘Melbourne also dropped hints about her personal hygiene, which had fallen off sharply.

‘She really should try to change her clothes more often, something about which she admitted she had become “lazy”. And a bath taken in the early evening, before dinner, hinted the premier, might not go amiss.’

Miss Hughes, who is an expert on Victorian history and the director of creative non-fiction at the University of East Anglia, was unavailable to comment on her new book yesterday.

However a press officer at the university added: ‘You didn’t see that in the TV series did you?’ 

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