Elizabeth

David Starkey's magisterial account of Elizabeth I's reign - a number one bestseller.A woman in a man's world, confident of her destiny to reign, intensely intelligent, passionately sexual yet (she said) a virgin, Elizabeth was to become England's most successful ruler. Finding her way through the labyrinthine plots that surrounded the court, she had to live by her wits, surrounded by betrayal and suspicion, not knowing who to trust with her desire to be queen, or her desire to be a lover...

Winner of WH Smith Book Awards (Biography & Autobiography) 2001
Winner of WH Smith Book Awards: Biography & Autobiography 2001

“Fresh and lively... Vividly told... He sets before us not only the woman behind the throne but the girl behind the woman”

Sunday Times
The best account in English of the early years of Elizabeth... One of the most zestful pieces of narrative history written...a racy read and first-rate history Evening Standard
What a page turner! A white knuckle ride through history...inspired research, from the clues embedded in the portraits to court ceremonial to the often circumlocutory letters Time Out
I found myself compelled by David Starkey's vivid recreation of the hazardous uncertainty of Elizabeth's early life, her successive exclusions from the centre of power, the studiedly ambiguous answers she offered her interrogators, her inevitable implications in conspiracies and narrow escapes from execution Times Literary Supplement
Combines a relaxed and unfussy style with a thorough knowledge of the period and a sharp eye for detail. Elizabeth's life makes for a compelling story and Starkey tells it well Spectator

Dr David Starkey is a historian and broadcaster, and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. In 2000 he presented the acclaimed Channel Four series Elizabeth, and in 1998 he presented David Starkey's Henry VIII, also on Channel Four. He writes regularly for both popular newspapers and learned journal, and is a controversial panellist on Radio 4's The Moral Maze. An expert on constitutional history, he is the author of several other books on the Tudor period.For further information, and details of forthcoming projects, see

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