England's Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy - Tapa blanda

a fascinating cultural history of England itself in terms of its obsession with Anne Boleyn's resilient daughter . . . a scholarly, wide-ranging, lively and often witty book (Anne Barton, London Review of Books)

a compelling book, energetically and often wittily written, and drawing on a wide range of media (History Today)

wide-ranging, lively and often witty book that you will read long after this quatercentenary year, which has provided its occasion, has passed (London Review of Books)

No monarch is more glamorous or more controversial than Elizabeth I. The stories by which successive generations have sought to extol, explain, or excoriate Elizabeth supply a rich index to the cultural history of English nationalism - whether they represent her as Anne Boleyn's suffering orphan or as the implacable nemesis of Mary, Queen of Scots, as learned stateswoman or as frustrated lover, persecuted princess or triumphant warrior queen. This book examines the many afterlives the Virgin Queen has lived in drama, poetry, fiction, painting, propaganda, and the cinema over the four centuries since her death, from the aspiringly epic to the frankly kitsch. Exploring the Elizabeths of Shakespeare and Spenser, of Sophia Lee and Sir Walter Scott, of Bette Davis and of Glenda Jackson, of Shakespeare in Love and Blackadder II, this is a lively, lavishly-illustrated investigation of England's perennial fascination with a queen who is still engaged in a posthumous progress through the collective pysche of her country.