From Booklist
This year is the four-hundredth anniversary of the death of Elizabeth I, and this timely and engrossing biography is a worthy tribute to the "Virgin Queen." Previous biographies devote as much space to the Elizabethan epoch as they do to the personal story of Elizabeth. Loades, emeritus professor of history at the University of Bangor in Wales, has chosen to emphasize the development of Elizabeth's personal traits, loves, hopes, and fears from infancy to death. Of course, the great events of the sixteenth century inevitably intrude upon her personal story, but it is Elizabeth that remains at the center of this riveting saga. As Loades illustrates, she was born and reared within a courtly life that bred insecurity; for all of her later strength and determination as a monarch, it appears that insecurity never left her consciousness. Loades portrays Elizabeth the queen as dynamic, yet sometimes frustratingly inconsistent. She could be vindictive and petulant, but her charisma and her ability to inspire genuine devotion are made crystal clear.