Elizabeth, The Queen and The Lady Elizabeth

Dec 25, 2024 8:56 AM

Author:Alison Weir

A special bundle of one fiction and one non-fiction title from betselling historian Alison Weir, both centred around Elizabeth I:

The Lady Elizabeth:

England, 1536. Home to the greatest, most glittering court in English history. But beneath the dazzling façade lies treachery... Elizabeth Tudor is daughter to Henry VIII, the most powerful king England has ever known. She is destined to ascend the throne, and deferred to as the King`s heiress, but that all changes when her mother Anne Boleyn - Henry`s great passion and folly - is executed for treason. A pawn in the savage game of Tudor power politics, she is disinherited, declared a bastard, and left with only her quick wits to rely on for her very existence. But Elizabeth is determined to survive, to foil those who want to destroy her, or who are determined to use her as a puppet for their own lethal ambition, and to reclaim her birthright...

Elizabeth, the Queen:

This book begins as the young Elizabeth ascends the throne in the wake of her sister Mary's disastrous reign. Elizabeth is portrayed as both a woman and a queen, an extraordinary phenomenon in a patriarchal age. Alison Weir writes of Elizabeth's intriguing, long-standing affair with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, of her dealings - sometimes comical, sometimes poignant - with her many suitors, of her rivalry with Mary, Queen of Scots, and of her bizarre relationship with the Earl of Essex, thirty years her junior.

Rich in detail, vivid and colourful, this book comes as close as we shall ever get to knowing what Elizabeth I was like as a person.

Reviews

Excellent...intricate and absorbing... An elegant, shrewd and wonderfully vivacious book.

—— Miranda Seymour , Sunday Times

Must certainly be among the year's most memorable non-fiction books

—— Financial Times

A scholarly desktop travel through lost worlds

—— The Times

A genuinely compelling book: erudite, original, beautifully written

—— Literary Review

Sattin has written a brilliantly assured experiment in biography, a triumph of the historical imagination. Convincingly researched, informed by an unobtrusive first-hand knowledge of Egyptian places, compellingly skilful in the writing, the whole story is illuminated by Anthony Sattin's delicately perceptive sense of character in action.

—— Literary Review

Remarkable

—— Scotsman

Sattin's account is authoritative, thoroughly researched and pacy . . . this book is a treat.

—— Time Out

Elegant and absorbing, A Winter On The Nile sheds fresh light upon two titans of the age

—— Tim Butcher, author of BLOOD RIVER

Beguiling and impressively researched ... A compelling snapshot of two of the most celebrated figures of the age, before their fame, and of a time when travel was leisurely and scholarly. And it sings with the romance of Egypt

—— Traveller Magazine

If this doesn't win a major book prize, I will eat my sola topi ... Beautifully counterpoints the spiritual travel experiences of the soon-to-be-famous nurse fleeing an arranged marriage, with the much more lubricious ones of the then-unpublished novelist.

—— Giles Foden , Conde Nast Traveller

In 1849, Florence Nightingale and author Gustave Flaubert visited Egypt. Anthony Sattin's book recreates the transformative steps towards fame these two took as they simultaneously travelled around Egypt

—— BBC Lonely Planet magazine

A fascinating biography

—— Lesley McDowell , Herald

This book is excellent

—— Andrew Holgate , Sunday Times

This dramatic biography recreates her tragic life and the turbulent times in which she lived...Nemirovsky is one of those rare writers whose life is every bit as interesting as her work

—— Simon Shaw , Mail on Sunday

This is a scholarly biography of a literary paragon... It is saturated with her writings, revealing her passions, hubris, moods and anxieties, as well as her thoughts of fiction, Jewishness and mothers... Russian social history, anti-Semitism and the Vichy regime's collusion with the Nazis are handled adroitly

—— Maggie Armstrong , Irish Times

An epic novel... The suspense lasts until the final pages. There is no let-up. At the end of the book, you really feel that even though Sashenka is a fictional character, she has become one of the thousands of real people who haunt the Moscow archives that Montefiore knows so well

—— SUNDAY EXPRESS

Previous Article：Culloden Tales Next Article：The Imperial Capitals of China

Comments

Welcome to zzdbook comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.