num_pages: 115
description: In the popular imagination as in her portraits Elizabeth I is the image of monarchical power. The Virgin Queen ruled over a Golden Age: the Spanish Armada was defeated; English explorers reached the ends of the earth; a new Church of England rose from the ashes of past conflict; the English Renaissance bloomed in the genius of Shakespeare Spenser and Sidney. But the image is also armour.In this illuminating new account of Elizabeth's reign Helen Castor shows how England's iconic queen was shaped by profound and enduring insecurity-an insecurity which was both a matter of practical political reality and personal psychology. From her precarious upbringing at the whim of a brutal capricious father and her perilous accession after his death to the religious division that marred her state and the failure to marry that threatened her line Elizabeth lived under constant threat. But facing down her enemies with a compellingly inscrutable public persona the last and greatest of the Tudor monarchs would become a timeless fearless queen.
language: English
title: Elizabeth I: A Study in Insecurity
publisher: Penguin UK