As the Queen advances indefatigably into the year-long festivities for her Diamond Jubilee, thoughts inevitably turn to the last British sovereign who survived to celebrate 60 years on the throne.

Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 marked the refulgent patriotic zenith of the British Empire. Standing less than 5ft tall, but nevertheless a towering colossus throughout the world, the iconic Queen Empress gave her name to an age that produced an empire measuring some 40 million square kilometres, with 387 million subjects.

It was an age characterised by extreme sexual repression, strait-laced morality and invincible ignorance. Victoria flatly refused to allow her government to legislate against lesbianism, not because she approved of it, but because she regarded it as a physical impossibility.

But now an astonishing article, published this month in The Oldie magazine, seeks to explode this greatest of all royal myths....

It claims that after the untimely death of her husband, Albert, the Prince Consort, Victoria sought sexual solace with her uncouth, arrogant and heavy-drinking Highland ghillie, John Brown. It further alleges that the Queen secretly married Brown in a clandestine ceremony and then bore him a child.

The 82-year-old historian, John Julius (2nd Viscount) Norwich, son of the legendary society beauty Lady Diana Cooper, is cited as a source for this story....