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Elizabeth

The Forgotten Years

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Elizabeth

By: John Guy
Narrated by: Alex Jennings
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.


An ageing queen, an heirless state, conspiracy all round: here is the court of Elizabeth I as never known before.

History has pictured Elizabeth I as Gloriana, an icon of strength and power -- and has focused on the early years of her reign. But in 1583, when Elizabeth is fifty, there is relentless plotting among her courtiers -- and still to come is the Spanish Armada and the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. We have not, until now, had the full picture.

This gripping and vivid portrait of her life and times -- often told in her own words (and including details such as her love of chess and marzipan) -- reveals a woman who was insecure, human ('You know I am no morning woman'), and unpopular even with the men who fought for her. This is the real Elizabeth, for the first time.


© John Guy 2016 (P) Penguin Audio 2016

 Europe Great Britain Politics & Activism Renaissance Royalty England Middle Ages Tudor

Critic Reviews

A beautifully rounded portrait of both the woman and the queen . . . This is a masterful biography. (Amanda Foreman)
A gripping story of Queen Elizabeth's last years, authoritatively researched and engagingly recounted by the leading Tudor historian of our age (James Shapiro, author of 1599 and 1606)
One of the very best historians we have in the country . . . It is brilliant, vigorous history, and a triumph of storytelling and scholarship (Jessie Childs)
Guy's careful work with documents known and unknown, scattered throughout Europe's archives, allows him to paint a novel portrait of a complex - maybe even unknowable - queen (John Gallagher)
The best biography ever written of the Virgin Queen - a revisionist, sensitive, compelling, majestic masterwork that you can't put down (Simon Sebag-Montefiore)
John Guy's Elizabeth presents a beautifully rounded portrait of both the woman and the queen. Thanks to Guy's prodigious use of previously untapped material, we see, for the very first time, the full panoply of ambition and insecurity, plotting and deceit that marked the middle years of her reign. This is a masterful biography. (Amanda Foreman)
As you'd expect from John Guy, this is a very good read, a vivid and fascinating warts-and-all portrait of the ageing Elizabeth, backed by meticulous research (Claire Tomalin)
A gripping story of Queen Elizabeth's last years, authoritatively researched and engagingly recounted by the leading Tudor historian of our age. It will be of special interest to anyone interested in the political world in which Shakespeare's Elizabethan drama is steeped-from anxiety over royal succession to England's costly war in Ireland (James Shapiro, author of 1599 and 1606)
John Guy is arguably the world's leading expert on Tudor history. When he writes a book, especially this, his first on Elizabeth's life, it should be taken very seriously as having something new to say, and so it does ... a wonderful book and a magisterial account of the latter half of Elizabeth's reign that calmly reassesses every claim and myth by simply reading all the original manuscript correspondence. The result puts the record straight, but it also allows Guy to produce a pacy and compelling story (Jerry Brotton)
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