Authors: Margaret George

Elizabeth I (127 page)

Books dealing with the personalities who loom so large include Benjamin Woolley’s
The Queen’s Conjurer
(New York: Henry Holt, 2002), a biography of John Dee, Elizabeth’s astrologer; Robert Lacey’s
Robert, Earl of Essex: An Elizabethan Icarus
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1971); and Robert Lacey’s
Sir Walter Ralegh
(London: History Book Club, 1973). Francis Bacon’s
Complete Essays
(New York: Dover Publications, 2008), allows us to experience firsthand his dazzling intelligence and observations about life, as relevant now as when he wrote them. Neville Williams’s
All the Queen’s Men: Elizabeth I and Her Courtiers
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1972), is a good overview and includes portraits of many people, allowing us to picture them more easily. Lacey Baldwin Smith’s
Treason in Tudor England: Politics and Paranoia
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1986), throws light into the murky—and foreign to us—depths of the Tudor-era mind. Finally, for details about the personal lives and situations of the men who sat in the House of Commons, there is P. W. Hasler’s
The House of Commons 1558-1603
, 3 vols. (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1981). This series was commissioned by the History of Parliament Trust.

Lettice Knollys is due a biography, and no doubt one will appear soon, as her story is important and absorbing. At the moment, a novel by Victoria Holt,
My Enemy the Queen
(New York: Doubleday, 1978), fills the void.

Books on the women who served Elizabeth include the newly published biography by Ruth Elizabeth Richardson,
Mistress Blanche, Queen Elizabeth’s Confidante
(Great Britain: Logaston Press, 2007), along with Dulcie M. Ashdown’s
Ladies in Waiting
(London: Arthur Barker, 1976) and Anne Somerset’s
Ladies in Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984).

Books about Shakespeare abound. I found James Shapiro’s
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599
(New York: HarperCollins, 2005); Charles Nicholl’s
The Lodger
(New York: Viking Penguin, 2008); and Stephen Greenblatt’s
Will in the World
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), good at reminding me that Shakespeare was a man before he turned into the Bard.

Statesmen deserve their own studies, and Conyers Read’s
Mr Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1955) and
Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1960) give the great man his due in exhaustive detail.

Studies about the Armada have been undergoing a new popularity. The original analysis of what happened was Garrett Mattingly’s brilliant
The Armada
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959). But newer works, adding to this, are Patrick Williams’s
Armada
(Great Britain: History Press, 2000); John Barratt’s
Armada 1588: The Spanish Assault on England
(Great Britain: Pen & Sword Military, 2005); and Neil Hanson’s
The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True History of the Spanish Armada
(New York: Knopf, 2003). The latter has an unfavorable view of the English, particularly Elizabeth.

People are fascinated by espionage in the Elizabethan era. I found Stephen Budiansky’s
Her Majesty’s Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage
(New York: Viking Penguin, 2005); Alan Haynes’s
The Elizabethan Secret Services
(Great Britain: Sutton, 1992); and Charles Nicholl’s
The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1992) to be very instructive.

Finally, there are books examining the perception of Elizabeth through the ages. These sociological/popular culture books remind us that history is not a static thing but constantly changes—or at least the interpretation of it changes—as the mind-set of a society changes. Michael Dobson and Nicola J. Watson’s
England’s Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), is particularly recommended for this.