Elizabeth and Leicester

Description

View our feature on Sarah Gristwood’s Elizabeth & Leicester.Though the story has been told on film—and whispered in historic gossip—this is the first book in almost fifty years to solely explore the great queen’s attachment to her beloved Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Fueled by scandal and intrigue, their relationship set the explosive connection between public and private life in sixteenth-century England in bold relief. Why did they never marry? How much of what seemed a passionate obsession was actually political convenience? Elizabeth and Leicester reignites this 400- year-old love story in a book for anyone interested in Elizabethan literature.Elizabeth & LeicesterPreface

1. ‘Some secret constellation’: 1533-1536
2. ‘Her eighth year’: 1536-1547
3. ‘The occasion of his utter undoing’: 1547-1553
4. ‘This night I think to die’: 1553-1559
5. ‘The King that is to be’: spring 1559-summer 1560
6. ‘So sudden a chance’: autumn 1560
7. ‘Maiden honour and integrity’: 1560-1561
8. ‘Not yet towards a marriage’: 1561-1565
9. ‘Majesty and love do not sit well together’: 1565-1567
10. ‘The daughter of debate’: 1568-1569
11. ‘The great Lord’: the 1570s
12. ‘Our estate requireth a match’: 1570-1572
13. ‘I have long both loved and liked you’: 1573-1575
14. ‘Dishonorable brutes’: 1576-1579
15. ‘The greatest prince in Christendom’: 1578-1582
16. ‘In times of distress’: 1582-1584
17. ‘Her Majesty will make trial of me’: 1585-1588
18. ‘A thing whereof we can admit no comfort’: 1588
19. ‘To end this life for her service’

Appendix I: The second Robert Dudley
Appendix II: The Arthur Dudley mystery
Afterword: some fictional treatments
Notes on sources
Acknowledgments
Picture acknowledgments
Index

“Quite simply one of the most enthralling history books I’ve ever read.”—Alison Weir, author of The Life of Elizabeth I

“Gristwood . . . parses out what we do know about this pair and what information fuels many of the more titillating conclusions people have drawn over the years.”—Chicago Sun-Times

“Vivacious and absorbing . . . Full of intriguing suggestions, stimulating analogies and shrewd connections.”—The Sunday Times (London)Sarah Gristwood is an author, biographer, and journalist. A regular contributor to the New York Times, Guardian, and Independent newspapers, she is the author of Elizabeth and Leicester, Arbella: England’s Lost Queen, and Game of Queens. She lives in London and Kent.US

Additional information