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 William Shakespeare.

"In Wilson's hands these familiar stories make for gripping reading."—The New York Times Book Review New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Author of Dante in Love A sweeping panorama of the Elizabethan age, a time of remarkable, strange personages and great political and social change, by one of our most renowned historians A time of exceptional creativity, wealth creation, larger-than-life royalty and political expansion, the Elizabethan age was also more remarkable than any other for the Technicolor personalities of its royals and subjects. Apart from the complex character of the Virgin Queen herself, A. N. Wilson's The Elizabethans follows the stories of Francis Drake, a privateer who not only defeated the Spanish Armada but also circumnavigated the globe with a drunken, mutinous crew and without reliable navigational instruments; political intriguers like William Cecil and Francis Walsingham; and Renaissance literary geniuses from Sir Philip Sidney to Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Most crucially, this was the age when modern Britain was born and established independence from mainland Europe—both in its resistance to Spanish and French incursions and in its declaration of religious liberty from the pope—and laid the foundations for the explosion of British imperial power and eventual American domination. An acknowledged master of the all-encompassing single-volume history, Wilson tells the exhilarating story of the Elizabethan era with all the panoramic sweep of his bestselling The Victorians, and with the wit and iconoclasm that are his trademarks.

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The age of Elizabeth I continues to exercise a fascination unmatched by other periods of English history. Yet while the leading figures may seem familiar, many Elizabethan figures, including the queen herself, remain enigmatic. In Elizabethans Patrick Collinson examines the religious beliefs both of Elizabeth and of Shakespeare, as well as redrawing the main features of the political and religious structure of the reign. He understands the characters of the period as individuals but is also sensitive to the attitudes and beliefs of the day.

This book offers an experiential perspective on the lives of Elizabethans—how they worked, ate, and played—with hands-on examples that include authentic music, recipes, and games of the period. Daily Life in Elizabethan England: Second Edition offers a fresh look at Elizabethan life from the perspective of the people who actually lived it. With an abundance of updates based on the most current research, this second edition provides an engaging—and sometimes surprising—picture of what it was like to live during this distant time. Readers will learn, for example, that Elizabethans were diligent recyclers, composting kitchen waste and collecting old rags for papermaking. They will discover that Elizabethans averaged less than 2 inches shorter than their modern British counterparts, and, in a surprising echo of our own age, that many Elizabethan city dwellers relied on carryout meals—albeit because they lacked kitchen facilities. What further sets the book apart is its "hands-on" approach to the past with the inclusion of actual music, games, recipes, and clothing patterns based on primary sources.

A collection of some of the best, wittiest and most unusual excerpts from 16th- and 17th-century writing. "Shakespeare's England" brings to life the variety, the energy and the harsh reality of England at this time. Providing a portrait of the age, it includes extracts from a wide variety of writers, taken from books, plays, poems, letters, diaries and pamphlets by and about Shakespeare's contemporaries. These include William Harrison and Fynes Moryson (providing descriptions of England), Nicholas Breton (on country life), Isabella Whitney and Thomas Dekker (on London life), Nashe (on struggling writers), Stubbes (with a Puritan view of Elizabethan enjoyments), Harsnet and Burton (on witches and spirits), John Donne (meditations on prayer and death), King James I (on tobacco) and Shakespeare himself.