Lex Tempo Interviews Veronica Winslow
Lex Tempo: Veronica, let’s not mince words. You’ve appointed Karl Marx as Queen Victoria’s accountant. Is this the most dangerous use of historical fiction since Abraham Lincoln hunted vampires?
Veronica Winslow: Possibly. But I’d argue it’s less dangerous and more delightfully disastrous. I’ve always suspected that British history was written by committee during a particularly boozy lunch. Marx just showed up early.
Lex: The premise is absurd. And yet, somehow, disturbingly plausible. How did the idea strike you?
Veronica: I was staring at a spreadsheet and thought, “Who would utterly hate this?” Marx, obviously. Then I wondered what would happen if he had to manage one. The rest spiraled out from there—as these things do when corgis unionize.
Lex: Let’s talk tone. You swing wildly from intellectual satire to outright farce. Is there a line you won’t cross?
Veronica: Only the boring one. Satire thrives on excess, but it needs scaffolding. For every exploding teapot or budgetary waltz, there’s a question underneath. What happens when ideals are forced to balance a ledger? It’s easier to laugh at the collapse when it’s choreographed to a gavotte.
Lex: You’ve packed in a revolution, a goat-sharing commune, and an aristocrat who wants to privatize the monarchy. Were you worried it might be too much?
Veronica: Never. Victorian England is the perfect pressure cooker. It’s decorum at gunpoint. Throw Marx into that tea party, and suddenly the absurd becomes inevitable. The goat-sharing was Prince Albert’s idea, by the way. Blame him.
Lex: Speaking of Albert—you portray him as a kind of bumbling idealist. Isn’t that a bit unfair to history?
Veronica: Entirely. And delightfully so. He’s well-meaning but utterly misguided—a metaphor for every bureaucratic experiment ever launched with a mission statement and a goat.
Lex: Let’s get thorny. Some might say you trivialize Marxism by turning it into a punchline. Any regrets?
Veronica: Not a one. Comedy disarms ideology. If we can’t laugh at the rigidity of manifestos or the pomposity of peerage, we’re trapped between dogma and decorum. Marx isn’t a villain or a hero here—he’s a very smart man in a very silly room.
Lex: Queen Victoria’s arc—from naive figurehead to quasi-anarchist—was unexpected. Is she your secret protagonist?
Veronica: Perhaps. She begins as the straight woman to Marx’s chaos, but like any good monarch in a satire, she adapts. She learns to wield absurdity like a scepter. By the end, she’s leading a theatrical revolution with perfect posture.
Lex: And the corgis?
Veronica: Naturally. Every revolution needs foot soldiers. Preferably fuzzy ones with excellent discipline and tiny red coats.
Lex: Final question—what’s next for Veronica Winslow? Can we expect more historical lunacy?
Veronica: Oh, absolutely. Let’s just say the next book involves Sigmund Freud, a disgruntled opera company, and the Treaty of Versailles. Therapy may be required.
Lex: Consider me simultaneously alarmed and intrigued. Thank you, Veronica.
Veronica: A pleasure. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a revolution to audit.
About the Author
Veronica Winslow is a novelist, historian, and former political journalist who writes fiction with a scalpel in one hand and a crumpet in the other. Her work lives at the intersection of satire and scholarship, blending sharp historical insight with wickedly subversive humor to interrogate the absurdities of power, politics, and human folly. With a Master’s degree in History and a career spent spelunking through archives and political speeches, Winslow treats the past not as sacred scripture but as a playground of ideas—and pratfalls.
She began her professional life reporting on real-world absurdities before realizing fiction was the only venue where truth could truly let its hair down. Now she spends her days in a book-cluttered townhouse, plotting revolutions with her cat (who only responds to Latin), and transforming footnotes into punchlines.
Coming August 2025
Her latest novel, God Save the Queen’s Accountant, is a riotous reimagining of Victorian Britain where a clerical mix-up installs Karl Marx as Royal Accountant to Queen Victoria. As budgetary revolution rocks the monarchy—complete with trade-unionist corgis and a duke-turned-capitalist-coup-plotter—the novel skewers ideology, bureaucracy, and decorum with gleeful precision. It’s Blackadder meets The Communist Manifesto in a ballroom of bad decisions—and you’re cordially invited.
