Overview

A new biographical portrait that casts the queen as she saw herself-not as an exceptional woman, but as an exceptional ruler Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her weak and feeble woman's body to do so for political gain. But in Elizabeth, historian Lisa Hilton offers ample evidence of why those famous words should not be taken at face value. With new research out of France, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, Hilton's fresh interpretation is of a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince and used Machiavellian statecraft to secure that position. A decade since the last major biography, this Elizabeth breaks new ground and depicts a queen who was much less constrained by her femininity than most treatments claim. For readers of David Starkey and Alison Weir, it will provide a new, complex perspective on Elizabeth's emotional and sexual life. It's a fascinating journey that shows how a marginalized, newly crowned queen, whose European contemporaries considered her to be the illegitimate ruler of a pariah nation, ultimately adapted to become England's first recognizably modern head of state.

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9781504673129

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Reviews

The birth-to-death reconstruction of one of one of history's most remarkable lives, here rendered so gracefully into voice, engages both the mind and the imagination-no matter how well you already know Elizabeth I's story. Kelly Birch's narration sets a standard for the Queen's English. -- AudioFile In this focused, well-researched biography, Hilton transforms an irreverent, centuries-old vision of a 'bewigged farthingale with a mysterious sex life' into a resolute, steel-spined survivor who far surpassed Henry VII's wildest hopes for his new dynasty. -- Publishers Weekly A new approach to writing Elizabeth's life, one which places her firmly in the context of the European Renaissance and beyond. This is an interesting idea, as most biographies look at Elizabeth's life and reign from an overwhelmingly English perspective, an extension of our enduring obsession with the Tudors. -- History Today Hilton delivers an enthralling account of a life and reign...Mildly revisionist, well argued, and thoroughly satisfying. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Lisa Hilton opens her new biography of Elizabeth I by outlining her leading idea: that Elizabeth was a new kind of ruler for England, a prince on the Machiavellian model, who held that 'the ruler's primary duty was the preservation of the state at any cost.' By ruling in this way, Hilton asserts Elizabeth led her realm out of the Middle Ages and towards modern nationhood. -- Times Literary Supplement Hilton provides us with an accomplished evocation of a remarkable ruler. Her book is as elegantly fashioned and ingeniously contrived as those pieces of Renaissance jewelry that Elizabeth loved to wear. -- Mail on Sunday (London) Hilton's ambitious re-examination of the intersection of gender and monarchy...is a comprehensive and generally lively retelling of Elizabeth's life. -- New York Times Book Review

Author Information

Lisa Hilton is the acclaimed author of The Horror of Love, Mistress Peachum's Pleasure, Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens, and The Real Queen of France: Athenais and Louis XIV. She is the author of two novels, the bestselling Wolves in Winter and The House with Blue Shutters, which was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Kelly Rose Birch was born in Kent, England, and has been using her voice to entertain and educate for more than twenty years. While still in England, she began her career as an actor with leading roles in such plays as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Salad Days. Since moving to America, Kelly Rose has continued her acting but has principally been a molecular epidemiologist in Berkeley, California.

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