The Queen has launched a website documenting the life of her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria in her own words - but revealed she had no plans to publish her own diaries.

More than 40,000 pages of the journals kept by Victoria from the age of 13 until just before her death have been made available online.

The Queen was handed a remote control in Buckingham Palace's throne room today, which she pointed at a screen to officially launch the website, www.queenvictoriasjournals.org.

The pages have been scanned - some in Victoria's own hand and some edited and then transcribed by her daughter Beatrice after her death - for the six-month project, carried out to mark the Diamond Jubilee.

In her diary, Victoria wrote of the scenes that greeted her during a parade to mark her own 60-year reign: "Passed through dense crowds, who gave me a most enthusiastic reception. It was like a triumphal entry. We passed down Cambridge Terrace, under a lovely arch bearing the motto, 'Our hearts thy Throne'.

"The streets were beautifully decorated, also the balconies of the houses with flowers, flags, and draperies of every hue... The streets, the windows, the roofs of the houses, were one mass of beaming faces, and the cheers never ceased."

Writing on the website, launched alongside a Twitter account providing extracts from the journals, the Queen said: "In this the year of my Diamond Jubilee, I am delighted to be able to present, for the first time, the complete online collection of Queen Victoria's journals from the Royal Archives.

"These diaries cover the period from Queen Victoria's childhood days to her accession to the throne, marriage to Prince Albert, and later, her Golden and Diamond Jubilees.

"It seems fitting that the subject of the first major public release of material from the Royal Archives is Queen Victoria, who was the first Monarch to celebrate a Diamond Jubilee."