Elizabeth I
Investigating Elizabeth
Elizabeth I on 4
Time Traveller’s Guide to Tudor England
Everything the adventurous traveller needs to journey to the time of Henry VIII, Bloody Mary and the Virgin Queen.
Monarchy by David Starkey
Charts how England evolved from a land of warlords to become a constitutional monarchy, and illuminates the lives of the extraordinary men and women who held the throne – including Elizabeth I.
Elizabeth: Apprenticeship
An extract from Dr David Starkey's biography of the young Elizabeth.
Elizabeth’s Pirates
How the Virgin Queen turned to her privateers to raise money and wage war.
An interview with Mia J Rodriguez-Salgado
A professor of international history at the London School of Economics, who appeared in the Elizabeth’s Pirates documentary, talks about England’s status during Elizabeth’s reign and the queen’s reliance on privateers.
Books
Here are the books that Helen Mirren studied for her portrayal of the Virgin Queen.
Elizabeth I by Anne Somerset (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002)
Somerset analyses both Elizabeth’s personal life and her career as a leader. 'By applying herself industriously to the evidence, [she] presents a convincing as well as complex character at the centre of her long, but ever lucid narrative.'
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Elizabeth the Queen by Alison Weir (Pimlico, 1999)
Beginning as the young Elizabeth ascends the throne, Weir shows her as both a woman and a queen, an extraordinary phenomenon in a patriarchal age. ‘This is a biography that understands not only what happened, but how it seemed and felt at the time.’
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