In her highly praised The Six Wives of Henry VIII and its sequel, Children of England, Alison Weir examined the private lives of the ea kings and queens, and chronicled the childhood and youth of England's most successful monarchs, Elizabeth I. This book begin the young Elizabeth ascends the throne in the wake of her sister Mary's disastrous reign.
Elizabeth is portraved as both a woman and a queen, an extraordinary phenomenon in a patriarchal age. Alison Weir writes of Elizabeth's intriguing...