The statue of Victoria that stood in front of the Supreme Court (now the Legislative Council Building) was covered with an elaborate canopy

Relaxing over a cold drink on a very hot day in a delightful cafe on the Peak, I could not help overhearing the following loud conversation between two ill-informed tourists at the next table:

First ill-informed tourist: “Who is Victoria Peak named after?”

Second ill-informed tourist: “King Victoria!”

Because my father was a Victorian born during Queen Victoria's reign, it had never really occurred to me that English-speaking visitors to “Asia's World City” might know absolutely nothing about her. It was time to reflect on what they had said.

After they had gone I ordered another drink and thought about this strange conversation. Queen Victoria had died 110 years ago. Was it really so strange? The Dutch and the Spanish are the only other great former colonial powers that have retained their monarchies. If I were sunbathing on a beach in Bali, a former Dutch colony, I simply would not have a clue who had been the monarch of the Netherlands 110 years ago. This would make me an ill-informed tourist.

As so many places in this former British colony are still named Victoria, I thought that I should tell you something about Queen Victoria herself. She was only 18 years old and had led a sheltered life when she became queen in 1837.

The characters of the previous monarchs of Britain were not without blemish. King George III was mad. His son, the decadent George IV, was known as the Prince Regent and had been cynically described: "This Adonis in loveliness was a corpulent man of fifty." Victoria's predecessor, King William IV, had been nicknamed "Silly Billy" and was inclined to use obscene language.

In this electronic age where communications are improving hourly, our knowledge of history may rely on what we have seen on television. We may agree with the saying "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there" without realising that what we see on TV is basically only entertainment where history is inevitably altered to fit the plot. Nothing new! Shakespeare did it all the time. He has the villainous King Richard III slaughter his first victim when history establishes he was a child of three when the murder took place. Great drama! Bad history!

In the Victorian era, communications were primitive to an extreme. The first postage stamp, The Penny Black, was not issued until a couple of years after Victoria's coronation. Today it is difficult to imagine such a world. When the colony of Hong Kong was created, the British were very proud of their young queen who, unlike the Georges and foul-mouthed William, took her responsibilities very seriously; so they named everything they could think of after her. This became a habit. Victoria Park was not actually christened until 1957.

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, the Union Jack flew over one quarter of the world's land surface. She was also Empress of India as well as queen of the biggest empire in the history of mankind. To celebrate her Golden Jubilee in 1887, the good citizens of Hong Kong commissioned a statue of her which they erected in Royal Square, now called Statue Square.

During World War II, the city was looted by the Japanese when they occupied the colony. The mutilated statue was discovered after the war on the Osaka army arsenal scrapheap. It was lovingly restored by Raoul Bigazzi, the creator of the old Hongkong Bank mosaic ceiling.

Today, the queen sits on a pedestal in Victoria Park in Causeway Bay, growling at the traffic.