A lively and poignant biography of the young princess who, at the impressionable age of eleven, found that she was now heiress to the throne, by the New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Queen Victoria. We can hardly imagine a Britain without Elizabeth II on the throne. It seems to be the job she was born for. And yet for much of her early life the young princess did not know the role that her future would hold. She was our accidental Queen. Elizabeth's determination to share in the struggles of her people marked her out from a young age. Her father initially refused to let her volunteer as a nurse during the Blitz, but relented when she was 18 and allowed her to work as a mechanic and truck driver for the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service. It was her forward-thinking approach that ensured that her coronation was televised, against the advice of politicians at the time.Kate Williams reveals how the 25-year-old young queen carved out a lasting role for herself amid the changes of the 20th century. Her monarchy would be a very different one to that of her parents and grandparents, and its continuing popularity in the 21st century owes much to the intelligence and elusive personality of this remarkable woman. 16 pages of color and B&W illustrations

'We are a prince from a line of princes' Lisa Hilton's majestic biography of 'The Virgin Queen', Elizabeth I, provides vibrant new insights on the monarch's compelling, enthralling life story. It is a book that challenges readers to reassess Elizabeth's reign and the colourful drama, scandal and intrigue to which it is always linked. Using new research from sources in France and Italy, Lisa Hilton to presents a fresh interpretation of Elizabeth as a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince. She delivers a new perspective on the most intimate details of Elizabeth's life, and upon her attempts to fashion England into a Renaissance state. Elizabeth was not an exceptional woman but an exceptional ruler, and Hilton redraws English history with this animated portrait of an astounding life. Her biography maps the dramatic journey that Elizabeth took from being a timid and meek newly-crowned queen, to one of the most powerful and vivid monarchs ever to rule England.

Product Description: Encompassing murder, civil war, adultery, usurpation, and madness, here is the essential guide to Britain's Kings and Queens, written with a lively wit and packed with useful facts and information The tales of the various monarchs of Britain are some of the most interesting in the country’s vast history...read more

Product Description: Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124-1204), queen of France and England and mother of two kings, has often been described as one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages. Yet her real achievements have been embellished--and even obscured--by myths that have grown up over eight centuries...read more

Product Description: Paula Bartley’s Queen Victoria examines Victorian Britain from the perspective of the Queen. Victoria’s personal and political actions are discussed in relation to contemporary shifts in Britain’s society, politics and culture, examining to what extent they did – or did not – influence events throughout her reign...read more

Product Description: The story of an ambitious princess and heiress that captures this legendary medieval queen in all of her beauty and political intrigue. “A monstrous injurer of heaven and earth,” as Shakespeare referred to this powerful medieval matriarch, Eleanor of Aquitaine’s reign as England’s stormiest and most ambitious queen has never been matched...read more

Product Description: A new biographical portrait that casts the queen as she saw herself not as an exceptional woman, but as an exceptional rulerQueen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her weak and feeble woman s body to do so for political gain...read more

Product Description: This is the inside story of Elizabeth I's inner circle and the crucial human relationships which lay at the heart of her personal and political life. Using a wide range of original sources--including private letters, portraits, verse, drama, and state papers--Susan Doran provides a vivid and often dramatic account of political life in Elizabethan England and the queen at its center, offering a deeper insight into Elizabeth's emotional and political conduct--and challenging many of the popular myths that have grown up around her...read more

COSTA AWARD FINALIST  ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR Film rights acquired by Gold Circle Films, the team behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding.Working Title is in production with a film on the rivalry between Elizabeth and Mary staring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie based on John Guy's portraits of the warring queens.“A fresh, thrilling portrait… Guy’s Elizabeth is deliciously human.” –Stacy Schiff, The New York Times Book Review Elizabeth was crowned queen at twenty-five, but it was only when she reached fifty and all hopes of a royal marriage were behind her that she began to wield power in her own right. For twenty-five years she had struggled to assert her authority over advisers, who pressed her to marry and settle the succession; now, she was determined not only to reign but to rule. In this magisterial biography, John Guy introduces us to a woman who is refreshingly unfamiliar: at once powerful and vulnerable, willful and afraid. We see her confronting challenges at home and abroad: war against France and Spain, revolt in Ireland, an economic crisis that triggers riots in the streets of London, and a conspiracy to place her cousin Mary Queen of Scots on her throne. For a while she is smitten by a much younger man, but can she allow herself to act on that passion and still keep her throne?   For the better part of a decade John Guy mined long-overlooked archives, scouring handwritten letters and court documents to sweep away myths and rumors. This prodigious historical detective work has enabled him to reveal, for the first time, the woman behind the polished veneer: determined, prone to fits of jealous rage, wracked by insecurity, often too anxious to sleep alone. At last we hear her in her own voice expressing her own distinctive and surprisingly resonant concerns. Guy writes like a dream, and this combination of groundbreaking research and propulsive narrative puts him in a class of his own. "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   “Most historians focus on the early decades, with Elizabeth’s last years acting as a postscript to the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots and the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Guy argues that this period is crucial to understanding a more human side of the smart redhead.” – The Economist, Book of the Year

Discusses the life of Elizabeth of York whose marriage to Henry Tudor united the houses of York and Lancaster and ended the Wars of the Roses.

Product Description: During the Elizabethan era, writers such as Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, and others frequently expounded on mercy, exploring the sources and outcomes of clemency. This fresh reading of such depictions shows that the concept of mercy was a contested one, directly shaped by tensions over the exercise of judgment by a woman on the throne...read more