The virgin queen : the personal history of Elizabeth I / Christopher Hibbert.

Originally published: London: Penguin, 1990.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-[271]) and index.

Part 1: prologue -- the king's daughter -- the queen's sister -- "oh, lord! the queen is a woman!" -- subjects and suitors -- papists and puritans -- the queen in her privy chamber -- the queen in her council chamber -- the queen at court -- the queen on progress. Part 2: daughter of discord -- traitors and rebels -- plots and counterplots -- the queen's frog -- "this most wicked and filthy woman" -- "the enterprise of England" -- the Earl of Essex -- Lords and Commons -- "a lady shut in a chamber" -- the last act.

In her lifetime the cult of Queen Elizabeth, the virginal genius of a golden age, the "beauteous Queen of second Troy", rivalled that of the Virgin Mary herself. Praised for her wit and high intelligence, her consumate statecraft, her bravery and learning, and for a beauty as "radiant as the sun", she was considered so desirable a bride that even the Pope felt constrained to propose that she would make him a marvellous wife. This book presents a revealing portrait of an extraordinary woman by turns courageous and timid, gracious and violently cantankerous, kind and spiteful, sensitive and coarse, realistic yet grotesquely vain, at once so forceful and so vacillating and unpredictable that one of her principal minister complained in exasperation that she drove him "up the wall". Based on a wide range of contemporary documents and recent scholarship, Christopher Hibbert has drawn a picture of this fascinating and difficult woman, set firmly against the background her tumultuous times.