Elizabeth I acceded to the throne in 1558, restoring the Protestant faith to England. At the heart of the new queen's court lay Elizabeth's bedchamber, closely guarded by the favoured women who helped her dress, looked after her jewels and shared her bed. Elizabeth's private life was of public, political concern. Her bedfellows were witnesses to the face and body beneath the make-up and elaborate clothes, as well as to rumoured illicit dalliances with such figures as Robert Dudley. Their presence was for security as well as propriety, as the kingdom was haunted by fears of assassination plots and other Catholic subterfuge. For such was the significance of the queen's body: it represented the very state itself. This riveting, revealing history of the politics of intimacy uncovers the feminized world of the Elizabethan court. Between the scandal and intrigue the women who attended the queen were the guardians of the truth about her health, chastity and fertility. Their stories offer extraordinary insight into the daily life of the Elizabethans, the fragility of royal favour and the price of disloyalty.
R. Dasent (London, 1 890—1907) Adams, S., 'The Lauderdale Papers 1561—15 70: the Maitland of Lethington State Papers and Leicester Correspondence', Scottish Historical Review, 67 ...
In this Elizabethan exploration, Wilson follows the stories of privateer Francis Drake, political intriguers like William Cecil and Francis Walsingham; and Renaissance literary geniuses from Sir Philip Sidney to Christopher Marlowe and ...
Kate and her family believed in the new humanist-inspired fashion for educating girls, and she did everything she could to encourage Elizabeth's learning. Then, when Elizabeth's living arrangements changed in the aftermath of Henry's ...
Anna Whitelock's absorbing debut tells the remarkable story of a woman who was a princess one moment, and a disinherited bastard the next.
Anne Somerset examines the monarch and the woman. 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations.
This, the third volume of Alison Plowden's Elizabethan quartet, plots the true story of the Virgin Queen's courtships and her career as "the greatest tease in history".
... Elizabeth's Bedfellows, 2013, p. 7. 72. Anna Whitelock, Elizabeth's Bedfellows, 2013, p. 10. 73. Ibid, p. 42. 74. Christopher Skidmore, Death and the Virgin, Elizabeth, Dudley and the mysterious death of Amy Robsart, 2010, p. 115. 75 ...
“An original, masterly, and fascinating study [that] offers brilliant new insights into the shaping of the Virgin Queen.”—Alison Weir, New York Times bestselling author of the Six Tudor Queens series In vivid detail, historian Tracy ...
Guy argues that this period is crucial to understanding a more human side of the smart redhead.” – The Economist, Book of the Year
Along with a female companion, Hilda Douglas-Pennant, Ottoline toured Florence and visited Vernon Lee, a colorful artist and lesbian who had hangers-on who wore men's clothes and smoked cigars, and it was here that Ottoline had her ...