Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
The legend of Elizabeth I, the untouchable, charismatic Virgin Queen, is a powerful and enduring one. Most biographies focus on the years of her reign, during which she proved herself as adept a ruler -- and as shrewd an operator -- as England had ever seen. But while the history of her rule is fascinating, the story of how her remarkable character was forged seems vital to a full understanding of the woman who led England into a new age of prosperity, power, and artistic achievement. David Starkey's Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne explores the terra incognita of Elizabeth's early years, and the result is nothing short of captivating.
Starkey finds that Elizabeth's early years ran the gamut from days of snug security as the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and Henry's heir apparent, to the years of uncertainty after her mother's execution when
Elizabeth was separated from court and virtually forgotten. She received a first-rate academic education, excelling in languages and rhetoric and exhibiting a strong interest in the Protestant religion her father had established in England. But the education she received from life itself would prove far more valuable for the monarch-to-be. After the death of Henry VIII and Edward VI (Elizabeth's half brother), Elizabeth's status as sister and would-be successor to the Catholic queen Mary put her in a dangerous position.
It also put her in prison at Mary's command -- and perilously close to execution -- after plots to place Elizabeth on the throne were revealed. Starkey makes it clear that while others may have actually done the dirty work, Elizabeth was usually in the thick of these efforts. Her imprisonment taught her to cover her tracks, but it did not stop her maneuverings. While fervently professing her Catholic faith, she surrounded herself with Protestant advisers and attendants, and bided her time.
She evaded another snare of her sister's when Mary attempted to neutralize Elizabeth by marrying her off to a Catholic Spaniard in exchange for naming Elizabeth her successor. Perhaps Elizabeth had learned early on from the plight of her mother that marriage had its drawbacks. Starkey, however, suggests that Elizabeth, in a moment of true regality, would not accept the crown if it came through bullying and capitulation. Again, Elizabeth bided her time.
Her seeming patience -- for Starkey reveals that Elizabeth continued to plot -- paid off when Mary, never robust, entered her final illness. Elizabeth managed to convince the now irrational queen that she was, indeed, a staunch Catholic and vowed to preserve England as a Catholic realm. Upon Mary's death, Elizabeth ascended to the throne with no meaningful opposition, thereby beginning what would be a golden age, one of the most legendary reigns in history. Starkey lets us understand, for the first time, the forces that made her into the formidable woman -- and brilliant ruler -- that she would soon prove to be. (Julie Robichaux)
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Legends surround Elizabeth I like the jewels on her coronation crown. Her awe-inspiring air of command, her mastery of political theater, and her immensely successful policies piloted England into a golden age. Her reign introduced Shakespeare, thrashed the Spanish Armada, and brought calm and unity to a divided, shaken kingdom.
But she was also the most unlikely of monarchs. The younger daughter of one of Henry VIII's many wives, she was only three when her mother was executed. Her Catholic sister Mary imprisoned her for treason, bringing her to the edge of her own death.
In Elizabeth, historian David Starkey captures this and much more, depicting the princess's tumultuous life from her birth in 1533 to her accession to the throne in 1558. He recreates the extravagant characters, madcap schemes, and tragic plots that overshadowed those years, even as he describes the age's religious turmoil and political chaos with clarity and authority. Starkey's work is a masterpiece of biography, offering a new and vivid portrait of the vicissitudes of fortune that shaped England's greatest queen.
About the Author:David Starkey is a historian and commentator, and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He is a leading historian of Great Britain and the author of several works on the Tudor period. From 1972 until 1998 he was a Lecturer in History at the London School of Economics. he lives in London, England.
SYNOPSIS
An abused child, yet confident of her destiny to reign, a woman in a man's world, passionately sexual-though, as she maintained, a virgin-Elizabeth I was to be famed as England's most successful ruler. This brilliant new biography, by concentrating on the formative early years-from her birth in IT33 to her accession in 1558-shows how her experiences of danger and adventure formed her remarkable character and shaped her opinions and beliefs. A uniquely absorbing tale of one young woman's turbulent, courageous and seemingly impossible journey towards the throne, it is the story of the making of a queen.
In growing up, Elizabeth experienced every vicissitude of fortune and every extreme of condition. She was three years old at the time of her mother's execution; when she was a young woman, her stepfather cut her dress off of her with a knife. She had been Princess and inheritrix of England-then bastardized and disinherited. At sixteen she was the head of a great princely household. Yet she was also an accused traitor on the verge of execution. Amid all this, she had mastered the most advanced classical curriculum of the day. But it was her lessons in the school of life that mattered more-and that taught her her humanity.
David Starkey re-creates a host of extravagant characters, madcap schemes and tragic plots, while using original documents to point up the importance ofthe rituals of power and life at court. He writes with exceptional clarity about religion and constitutional history. Elizabeth, whose own Protestant faith was personal and sophisticated, was extremely judicious in her handling of Reform, as in her choice of advisors and councilors. Here, too, is afresh view of the famous rivalry between the daughters of Henry VIII: the pious Catholic Mary and her clever sister. While Elizabeth remained utterly devoted to her father, she was also determined not to lose her opportunity for power-and not to make the same mistakes as Mary. The skill with which she achieved her goal proved to be a sign that England had reached a watershed moment in its history. Starkey's close attention to detail and vivid storytelling ability combine to produce a narrative of these extraordinary years that reads like a novel. Meticulously researched and enormously compelling, Elizabeth is a masterpiece of biography.
FROM THE CRITICS
Times Literary Supplement
Vivid...Striking and original...Most impressive.
Indepedent
Elizabeth both thrills and convinces... Indeed this is very much an Elizabeth for our times.
Sunday Times
Fresh and lively...Starkey brings the princess Elizabeth out from the shadows of mid-Tudor history.
Evening Standard
The best account in English of the early years of Elizabeth... Both a racy read and a first-rate history...A tour de force.
Publishers Weekly
The Virgin Queen's posthumous retinue of admirers is threatening to outnumber the acolytes who surrounded her in life; here, in a very accessible way, Cambridge University historian Starkey (The Inventory of King Henry VIII etc.) addresses Elizabeth's young life in all of its "aching vulnerability," following her from childhood into the earliest years of her reign. Eschewing the evocative extravagance of Alison Weir's Life of Elizabeth I, this book's 44 brief chapters move crisply. Starkey's account is innocuously populist: he aspires to telling "a wonderful adventure story," in which allegations of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of Elizabeth's stepfather, Thomas Seymour, remain more spicy than disturbing. Still, despite his admission that he himself has half fallen for Elizabeth, what separates Starkey from other popular historians of the reign is his resolute avoidance of sentimentality. He presents us with a hard-headed queen, quite capable of chopping off the right hand of an obstreperous pamphleteer. He steers clear of the temptation to romanticize her as a national savior, suggesting that the restored Catholicism of the preceding reign (once described by a historian as "the least English episode in our history") was no less quintessentially English than Elizabethan Protestantism, itself eventually destined to degenerate into intolerance. 16 pages of color illustrations not seen by PW. (Dec. 2) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
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