nwhyte 's review for:

The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir

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http://nhw.livejournal.com/1125160.html[return][return]Weir concentrates on Elizabeth's reign from 1558 to 1603. She makes the point that her private life was very much lived in public, and I would add that it was clearly very political. Weir concentrates essentially on the internal politics of Elizabeth's court, which is great as a means of studying her statecraft, but does mean we miss out on some of the other important policy areas - notably, from my point of view, Ireland, which figures only as the scene of the death of the elder Earl of Essex and the catastrophic military failure of his son. Weir is anyway much more interested in the personal dramas of Elizabeth's relationships with the younger Essex, Leicester, and Mary Queen of Scots, which are all in fairness rather good stories. She is particularly good on using appropriate contemporary quotes (though misattributes Nicholas White's letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury).[return]