One of the most famous and tortured romances in history - between Elizabeth I, Queen of England, and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex - began in 1587, when she was fifty-three and he was nineteen. Their passionate affair continued for five years, until Essex was beheaded for treason in 1601. In a fast-paced succession of brilliantly rendered scenes, Lytton Strachey portrays Elizabeth and Essex's compelling attraction for each other, their impassioned disagreements and their mutual struggle for power, which culminated so tragically - for both of them. Alongside the doomed love affair, Strachey pens colourful portraits of the leading characters and influential figures of the time: Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, Robert Cecil and other members of her glittering court who fought to assert themselves in a kingdom and a country defined by Elizabeth's incomparable reign. Lytton Strachey here illuminates, in spellbinding prose, one of the most poignant affairs in history alongside the glamour and intrigue of the Elizabethan era.
- ISBN10 0192813102
- ISBN13 9780192813107
- Publish Date 15 October 1981 (first published December 1968)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 4 December 1992
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Oxford Paperbacks
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 256
- Language English