The New York Times Book Review - Stacy Schiff
Guy's Elizabeth is deliciously human…While she believed herself a queen first and a woman second, few others did. That tension animates the life. Guy is exquisitely attuned to the backwards-and-in-heels nature of Elizabeth's reign…Guy proceeds episodically through these years as Elizabeth hurtles from one crisis to the next. It is a structure that could induce a "history is one damned thing after another" weariness but does not, so effectively does Guy plunge us into the action…The result is a fresh, thrilling portrait…By the end, we come to understand why she and everyone around her had cause for exhaustion. For the rest of us, it is an invigorating performance.
Publishers Weekly
02/22/2016
The last Tudor monarch is often portrayed as a tempestuous warrior queen in her prime, but Guy (Queen of Scots), a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, asks readers to reconsider the nuances behind such a description, especially in the second half of her 44-year reign. With the remarkable advantage of access to long-buried and misfiled primary sources, Guy argues that the mature Elizabeth I did not stridently seek war (after participating in a disastrous land war), but instead reacted to and prepared for Spain’s onslaught of armadas while seeking peace. Elizabeth’s dangerous childhood informed the later years portrayed here. Whether dealing with her councilors or with the temperamental Earl of Essex, Guy argues that she remained queen first, woman second. Still, the aging monarch receives a balanced treatment: her fear of getting old feels relatable, while her fearless interference in Scotland serves as a reminder of her intense belief in her divine right to rule. The invaluable, newly discovered documents allow for clarification and occasional rebuttals against misinterpretations or cases of “pure invention” by the queen’s near contemporaries and other historians. Guy, whose previous work biased him against Elizabeth, uses that initial inclination to give readers a fuller view of the confident, experienced, and adaptable queen whose long, eventful reign—one sprinkled with “Kafkaesque elements’’—continues to fascinate. Maps & illus. Agent: Grainne Fox, Fletcher & Company. (May)
From the Publisher
A fresh, thrilling portrait… Guy’s Elizabeth is deliciously human.”
–Stacy Schiff, The New York Times Book Review
“A superb book. . . Guy persuades us that pretty much everything we think we know about Elizabeth is wrong. . . Considering that she was a Protestant in a Catholic-dominated Europe, a woman in a male-dominated world, the daughter of one parent who had been executed by the other. . . [she] should be seen as the most remarkable individual to have worn a European crown between Charlemagne and Napoleon.”
–Andrew Roberts, The Wall Street Journal
“Guy is a master of the early modern archive: few historians are better equipped to navigate the tangled skein of Elizabethan records. . . .his 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.”
—The Guardian
“[A] fresh, illuminating portrait of one of England’s greatest monarchs…Guy uses Elizabeth’s handwritten letters and other rarely exploited primary sources to impressive effect.”
–The Financial Times
“An illuminating study of England’s most revered monarch. Guy, a leading authority on the Tudor period, uses Elizabeth’s handwritten letters and other rarely exploited primary sources to impressive effect.”
– Financial Times, Best Book of the Year
"Significant, forensic and myth-busting, John Guy inspires total confidence in a narrative which is at once pacey and rich in detail."
— Anna Whitelock, TLS
“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, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire
"A gripping story of Queen Elizabeth’s last years, authoritatively researched and engaging recounted by the leading Tudor historian of our age."
–James Shapiro, author of The Year of Lear
“This is a very good read, a vivid and fascinating warts-and-all portrait of the ageing Elizabeth, backed by meticulous research.”
—Claire Tomalin, author of Jane Austen
"Magisterial... the definitive account of that era for the present generation"
-Country Life
“Outstanding. . . This page-turning book is history, biography, scholarship personified, and a crystal-clear look at Elizabeth in the war years that erases the myths and presents the real woman. Absolutely one of the best biographies of Elizabeth ever.”
–Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)
"Guy gives readers a fuller view of the confident, experienced, and adaptable queen whose long, eventful reign—one sprinkled with "Kafkaesque elements"—continues to fascinate."
–Publisher's Weekly
"Meticulously researched and highly readable. . . Readers will be fascinated by Guy's careful psychological portrait of the aging monarch in the sunset of her reign."
–Library Journal
Library Journal
04/01/2016
Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, once described Elizabeth I (1533–1603) as a "sphinx whose riddles he could not unravel." Historian Guy (Thomas Becket) sheds light on the enigmatic queen in this meticulously researched and highly readable revisionist biography. Relying on over 250,000 pages of primary documents and drawing on 30 unpublished letters, the author aims to move beyond the "hoary myths" that have long surrounded the Virgin Queen. Although general readers may not be interested in the historiographical squabbles outlined in the preface, they will be fascinated by Guy's careful psychological portrait of the aging monarch in the sunset of her reign and the difficult period in the late 1500s that saw England at war with Catholic France and Spain, beset by economic crises, threatened by revolt in Ireland, and preoccupied with worries over the succession. Guy explains how the queen came into her own during these years, while also providing new insights into her private fears, goals, thoughts, and methods. Focusing on the particular problems Elizabeth faced as a woman in a patriarchal society, Guy deals sensitively with the issue of why she never married; her role in the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots; and the difficulties she faced in attempting to assert control over war policy. VERDICT Recommended for lovers of British history and feminist biography. [See Prepub Alert, 11/23/15.]—Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2016-02-16
The Whitbread Award-winning author delivers an outstanding biography of Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603). This page-turning book is history, biography, scholarship personified, and a crystal-clear look at Elizabeth in the war years that erases the myths and presents the real woman. Historian Guy (Henry VIII: The Quest for Fame, 2014, etc.), who is exceedingly well-versed in Tudor studies, deconstructs original sources, chooses which of many are more likely to be true, and shows Elizabeth as a vain, paranoid queen who endorsed torture and fought for her rights and privileges. Well-read, intelligent, fluent in French and Italian, Elizabeth believed she was beloved, but all her subjects could see were unproductive harvests and widespread poverty and disease. Among other primary sources, William Camden's Annales, completed in Latin in 1617, is Guy's best target. The author takes apart Camden's statements as deeply biased and the English translation as pure bowdlerization. In 1584, the assassination of Prince William of Orange began the wars with Spain that would last the rest of Elizabeth's life. The defeat of the first Spanish Armada in 1588 was only a short reprieve from the constant depletion of her treasury, as she also supported Henry IV of France against Spain and the Catholic League. Manipulated—and at the same time, likely saved—by Chief Minister Burghley and her spymaster, Francis Walsingham, she struggled to assert herself. It was Burghley's contrivance of Mary, Queen of Scots' death that brought Elizabeth to what the author calls her "Armada of the soul." Her responsibility for the execution of an anointed queen haunted her for the rest of her life. During her 45-year reign, she learned how to get around those who disagreed with her, but she never succeeded in controlling some of her favorites. Near the end, Guy's comparisons to Richard II, the usurped king, the usurper Bolingbroke, and Shakespeare's play take your breath away. One of the best biographies of Elizabeth ever.
