Queen Victoria of Great Britain and sundry tracts of land comprising almost a quarter of the earth's surface, sat on her throne for nigh on 64 years, long enough to make the age the Victorian era. Everyone remembers her as the dour perennial widow of Windsor she became later in life, who was famously not amused by much of anything. But she was a young girl of barely 18 when she was crowned, vivacious, fond of parties, and prone to flirting with the gentlemen of the court, and even her ministers.

In fact the virtues, and vices, which more often than not arguably are the same, that we now regard as quintessentially Victorian, would be more properly called "Albertian", as they were the imported, and in many ways un-English, ideals of her Teutonically severe Prince Consort, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

It is this early part of her life, leading up to her marriage, that is the subject of the new biopic, where Emily Blunt will play the queen. Perhaps it is Helen Mirren's Oscar triumph playing a later monarch of Britain, that has made the ancient institution hip in Hollywood.

According to trade mag Variety, no less a film maker than Martin Scorsese, who also, finally, triumphed at this year's Academy Awards, is producing the film, along with Graham King, who produced "The Departed", while Jean-Marc Vallée will be directing.

King said Blunt is "perfect to play this feisty, passionate young woman who went on to have nine children with the love of her life, Prince Albert."

Blunt has a busy dance card. She'll be in theaters next month with "Wind Chill." She's also in Mike Nichols' "Charlie Wilson's War." Upcoming as well are Sony Pictures Classics' "The Jane Austen Book," "The Great Buck Howard" and indie pic "Sunshine Cleaning."

Julian Fellowes, who previous to his Oscar win for his script for "Gosford Park" in 2001, was primarily known as an actor, and social climbing conservative, has written the script, a task for which he should be eminently suited.

Anyone with a streak of Anglophilia, or weakness for country house intrigue should pick up his novel "Snobs" (reviewed here by Jonathan Ames for The New York Times), a tale of a dying British upper class and those who would emulate them hanging on to a sweeter past.

One of the deeper insights of the book is how even the aristocracy tries to conform to their popular image, like the mafia eagerly incorporated "The Godfather" into their collective mythos.

But of course it has always been this way - "Fake it 'til you make it!" - image usually comes before reality, and this is as it must and should be. It is the only way we could improve both personally and as a group.

As for the nostalgia for the pre-1914 world; of course it's a self-serving yearning for a time when their class ruled the roost. But I think most people tracing the line of that old fashioned concept 'civilisation' would agree, though poverty was still very real, that through the social reforms instituted in the aftermath of the industrial revolution and the long peace since the Congress of Vienna, the western world was on an cultural and economic upswing of unprecedented proportions before that world was engulfed in the Inferno of Verdun and the Somme.

Furthermore, what got a grievous wound in 1914 was something missed by not only fading upper class snobs pining for the age of Victoria, namely innocent, trusting hope for the future.