Page "Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale" Paragraph 29

During his life, the bulk of the British press treated Albert Victor with nothing but respect and the eulogies that immediately followed his death were full of praise.

The radical politician, Henry Broadhurst, who had met both Albert Victor and his brother George, noted that they had " a total absence of affectation or haughtiness ".

On the day of Albert Victor's death, the leading Liberal politician, William Ewart Gladstone, wrote in his personal private diary " a great loss to our party ".

However, Queen Victoria referred to Albert Victor's " dissipated life " in private letters to her eldest daughter, which were later published and, in the mid-20th century, the official biographers of Queen Mary and King George V, James Pope-Hennessy and Harold Nicolson respectively, promoted hostile assessments of Albert Victor's life, portraying him as lazy, ill-educated and physically feeble.

The exact nature of his " dissipations " is not clear, but in 1994 Theo Aronson favoured the theory on " admittedly circumstantial " evidence that the " unspecified ' dissipations ' were predominantly homosexual ".

Aronson's judgement was based on Albert Victor's " adoration of his elegant and possessive mother ; his ' want of manliness '; his ' shrinking from horseplay '; his ' sweet, gentle, quiet and charming ' nature ", as well as the Cleveland Street rumours and his opinion that there is " a certain amount of homosexuality in all men ".

He admitted, however, that " the allegations of Prince Eddy's homosexuality must be treated cautiously.