A.N. Wilson's Elizabethans

style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">When I look at the books shelved around my desk, I can see Sex in Elizabethan England, An Elizabethan Progress, The Cult of Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s London, Elizabeth’s Spymaster and even After Elizabeth – to name but a few of the thousands of books on Elizabeth I, many of them in the prevailing fashion of themed histories. Their specific and sometimes idiosyncratic focus illustrates the question that this new history by AN Wilson posed me: do we really need a general overview of the reign of Elizabeth at all? Between the thorough and famous biographies and these narrow themed studies, is there any value in a new book that tries to cover a reign that lasted 45 years?