Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years

by John Guy Viking 512pp £25 The Week bookshop £21 (incl. p&p) Historians have generally been kind to the ageing Elizabeth I, accepting the image of her as the “selfless” Virgin Queen, said Craig Brown in The Mail on Sunday. Not so John Guy, author of this “exceptionally good” study of her final two decades: “it is hard to find a single word that he says in her favour, other than that she had beautiful hands, and was nimble on the dance floor”. Elizabeth emerges as being not unlike her Blackadder portrayal – petulant, vindictive, forever “ranting and raving”. Guy shows that many of the “key details” of her reign are actually myths. Rather than being a “warrior queen”, she mostly tried to restrain her commanders. And the idea that she had a…

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The Week United Kingdom (Digital) - 1 Issue, V. 1076

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