Elizabeth [Paperback]

The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, Good Queen Bess; Elizabeth I holds a unique place in the English imagination as one of the nation's most powerful, charismatic and successful monarchs. Elizabeth is usually imagined as the icy, untouchable figure memorably recreated on screen by Bette Davis and Judi Dench, but that vision of Elizabeth ignores the turbulent years of her early life, from her birth as the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn in 1533, until her accession to the throne in 1558 following the death of her sister Mary. It is these early years which are the subject of David Starkey's fascinating Elizabeth I, written to accompany his television series about the life of Elizabeth.

Starkey argues that in her first 25 years Elizabeth "had experienced every vicissitude of fortune and ever extreme of condition. She had been Princess and inheritrix of England, and bastard and disinherited; the nominated successor to the throne and an accused traitor on the verge of execution; showered with lands and houses and a prisoner in the Tower". He draws on his skills as a respected Tudor historian to produce a deft account of the religious, political and dynastic maelstrom of mid-16th century England that reads "like a historical thriller". The book carefully picks its way through the finer points of contemporary religious conflict and the peculiarities of Tudor court ceremony, whilst also exploring the formation of Elizabeth's character in relation to a murdered mother, a charismatic father, a tortured sister, and a predatory guardian. Highly readable and written with verve and pace, this is a fascinating account of the young Elizabeth. --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

"Unpredictable, harrowing, and engrossing."Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall and The Road Home

Handsome volume celebrating the reign of Elizabeth 1. Ties in with a major exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, and marks Elizabeth's 400th anniversary (she died in 1603). Contains 250 colour illustrations. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

An abused child, yet confident of her destiny to reign, a woman in a man¹s world, passionately sexual yet, she said, a virgin, famed as England's most successful ruler yet actually doing very little, Elizabeth I is a bundle of contradictions. Starting with Elizabeth¹s own speeches and writings, Starkey lays novel emphasis on two things: her faith made her see religion as a purely personal relationship between the individual conscience and God, yet her sophisticated education led her to a smoke-and-mirrors view of politics, in which clever image-making and speech-writing could solve or postpone real problems. The result was a surprisingly contemporary approach to some very modern questions, like civil strife in Scotland and Ireland and the risk of England¹s absorption into a European super-state. This new approach to the enigma of the Queen¹s character is presented within a lively and readable retelling of her reign; her love for Robert Dudley, the tragi-comedy of her favourites and suitors, her epic struggles with Mary Queen of Scots and Philip II of Spain, and the final, humiliating debacle of her relationship with Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.

The revised edition of the Number 1 Bestseller
'Fresh and lively...vivdly 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

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 labrynthine plots that surrounded the court, she had live by her wits, surrounded by betrayal and suspicion, not knowing who to trust with her desire to be queen, and to be a lover, too…

‘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’ TLS

‘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 ‘Subtle analysis, up-to-date research and balance between speculation and fact. An Elizabeth for our times’ Independent

'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

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 labyrinth 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...

'I found myself compelled by Davis Starkey's vivid recreation of the hazardous uncertainty of Elizabeth's early life, her successive exclusion from the centre of power, the studiedly ambiguous answers she offered her interrogators, her inevitable implications in conspiracies and narrow escapes from execution'

TLS

'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

'An Elizabeth for our times'

Independent

David Starkey is Honorary Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and the author of many books including ‘Elizabeth’; ‘Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII’ and ‘Monarchy: England and Her Rulers from the Tudors to the Windsors’. He is a winner of the WH Smith Prize and the Norton Medlicott Medal for Services to History presented by Britain’s Historical Association. He is a well-known TV and radio personality. He was made a CBE in 2007. He lives in London.

Elizabeth is extraordinary. She looks extraordinary. She behaves in an extraordinary way. And, as a woman moving effortlessly in a man’s world, she is doubly extraordinary. Part of the trouble, though, is that we think of her as being extraordinary for the wrong reasons. We think of Elizabeth, above all, as that bizarre confection of the last part of the reign: bejewelled, bewigged, beruffed, and utterly artificial. I invite you to consider another, very different Elizabeth, the Elizabeth portrayed as she was when she was young. This Elizabeth appears in a painting executed by a great though unknown artist almost certainly in the last month of her father’s life, January 1547 (Cat. no. 13). Here she is completely natural, and she looks what she is: a rather shy, rather awkward teenager.
What we have in this portrait is the teenager who formed the woman. And one of the most important things about the Exhibition is that it deals with this teenager and with her formative experience. So we do not just look at Gloriana, at the painted mask of her Final artificiality. We do not just look at the glory days of the latter part of the reign. We also look, long and hard, at the brutal experience of her youth.
This means that, when we open the Catalogue or go into the Exhibition galleries, the first thing we see is not an exquisite painting by Hilliard, not a confectionery-dress, nor some frou-frou, but an armour for man and horse (see page 1). It is beautifully decorated with the characteristic gold inlaid borders of the best Greenwich armour. But it is not a parade armour, but the real, working armour of one of the power-brokers of the middle of the sixteenth century, William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke. It is astonishing, brutal, like the mounted statue of an Italian condottiere.
And the man inside it fully lived up to the image. Herbert committed at least two murders in his youth. But he was twice pardoned by Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII. Indeed, impressed it is said by his performance in a sword-fight outside Whitehall, Henry took him into his household. There he rose rapidly. He married Anne Parr which made him, in the fullness of time, brother-in-law of Henry VIII’s last queen, Catherine Parr. And he became Chief Gentleman of the privy chamber, or joint-principal body servant of the King. As such, he witnessed Henry’s almost-certainly doctored Will, which gave him a substantial legacy and made him a member of the young King Edward VI’s privy council. Here he proved as grimly dextrous in politics as he was with the sword. He backed Northumberland against Somerset and was rewarded with an earldom. Then, after Edward’s death, he threw over Northumberland and Northumberland’s creature, Lady Jane Grey, and informed his demoralised fellow-councillors!
: ‘either this sword shall make Mary Queen or I’ll lose my life’.
He was as good as his word and was, effectively, Mary’s queen-maker. And he showed a similar bold determination in the other crises of the 1550s, such as Wyatt’s revolt, when he was Mary’s most effective commander, and the battle of St Quintin, when he led the English contingent that covered itself in glory.
So Elizabeth grew up a vulnerable teenager in a thug culture. And the reason she is so great, the reason she is so different from her father and her brother and sister, is that she had been on the receiving end.
The result is the most remarkable formation of any monarch in British history. It is as though Prince William had been sent not to Eton but to Wormwood Scrubs. For Elizabeth’s entire early life was a switchback. She was born to ease, as Princess and inheritrix of England. But her gender was a mistake: she was intended to be a boy, and the letters survive that announced the birth of the ‘Prince’, with the word hastily changed into ‘Princess’ by the addition of a scribbled letter ‘s’ when this unwelcome object was popped into the cradle designed by Holbein and made by the royal goldsmith.
Her mother, Anne Boleyn, more than compensated by the fine clothes and demonstrative affection she lavished on her daughter. But within three years Anne was divorced and executed. And not only executed but morally rent apart.
The false charges on which she was destroyed were not simply adultery but multiple adultery with five men; and not simply multiple adultery but incest, as one of the men was her brother; and not simply incest but perversion. I didn’t know the Latin for French kissing but there it is in the indictment: which lip-smackingly described how first the queen inserted her tongue into the mouth of her ‘natural brother’, George Boleyn, Lord Rochford, and how he in turn put his in hers as they kissed lewdly with open mouths.
How could the child of a mother so demonised survive, psychologically, if not physically? But Anne’s death didn’t destroy Elizabeth. Even more remarkably, it did not produce a devotion to her mother such as Mary felt after her mother, Catherine of Aragon’s, only slightly lesser martyrdom at Henry’s hands.
Instead, Elizabeth was devoted to her father. She was ‘her father’s daughter’. This phrase was first used about her at the age of six. And it appeared constantly thereafter. For contemporaries had only to use their eyes to see that it was true. She looked like Henry, with her father’s hair, skin-colour, nose and lips (though her eyes were dark and lustrous, like her mother’s, and she had her mother’s exceptionally long, slender fingers). She had much of Henry’s character as well: his intelligence, his force of personality, his eloquence, and his ineffable star-quality that made her, like him, the automatic centre of attention.
But in other, equally important respects, she was different, and self-consciously so. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.