#20aug2017

Judi Dench plays Victoria in a forthcoming film, opposite Ali Fazal (LMKMEDIA)

 Queen Victoria knew a thing or two about sex, given that she had nine children, and it might have seemed quite natural to her to dispense tips on sexual positions to the childless servant who taught her Urdu.

 However, in offering her wisdom she risked sending a royal household already riled by the closeness of the pair into rebellion.

 The relationship between Victoria and Abdul Karim, whom the household suspected of ill-intent, forms the basis of a film starring Judi Dench which is released next month.

 Dame Judi reprises her role as Victoria after appearing in Mrs Brown, and is ready to ratchet up the sexual tension. “She was a goer,” she said of Victoria. “And I am full of admiration.”

 Shrabani Basu, who wrote the book on which the film is based, said that a diary kept by Karim had survived the destruction of his belongings after Victoria’s death in 1901.

She also used the queen’s Hindustani journals, written in the Urdu Karim taught her and which Ms Basu said had barely been translated.

 Karim and Victoria are thought to have exchanged numerous letters and Ms Basu was given rare access to the Royal Archives where she discovered some that had survived.

 It shows the queen describing Karim as a “true friend” and littering them with kisses. In one letter dated 1894 Victoria tells Karim that his wife should “be careful at the particular time every month not to tire herself or go on rough roads”.

 Ms Basu writes: “The intimate details that the Queen wrote about showed how close she had come to Karim and how freely she discussed everything with him. Monitoring their love life and giving them suggestions on pregnancy and childbirth gave her a sense of matriarchy and fulfilment.”

 Family and apparatchiks resented Karim’s influence on the queen, questioned his national allegiances and had suspicions about at least one night the two shared in the glens.

 “Queen Victoria liked tall men by her side,” Ms Basu said. “He fits the profile of John Brown [the Scottish ghillie who was by her side after her husband’s death and was the basis of Dame Judi’s 1997 film]. I don’t think it was sexual in any sense although there is an intimacy.

 “She discusses why Abdul, who is married, is not having any children. She’s very frank, talking about positions with him.”

 Ms Basu said that this closeness concerned the palace. The queen’s son, who became Edward VII, was paranoid about Karim. In the hours after Victoria’s death he and his wife launched a “search and destroy” mission in India to recover all the correspondence between his mother and her munshi, or teacher. Princess Beatrice, Victoria’s youngest daughter, rewrote her mother’s diaries before they were published, leading to suspicions that references to Karim had been excised.

 The precise nature of the relationship between the two is likely to become much discussed in the run-up to the release of the film, Victoria and Abdul, directed by Stephen Frears, whose films include My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons and The Queen, next month

The film also stars Eddie Izzard as the Prince of Wales, Michael Gambon as Lord Salisbury, Olivia Williams as Baroness Churchill and Ali Fazal as Karim.