England's Elizabeth: An After life in Fame and Fantasy. . - Reviews - book review

Contemporary Review, March, 2003

England's Elizabeth: An After life in Fame and Fantasy. Michael Dobson and Nicola J. Watson. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]19.99. 348 pages. ISBN 0-19-818377-1. One of the principal tasks facing important people is creating the reputation that will survive after their deaths: of the five Tudor monarchs, only one really succeeded in leaving images that she would have liked: Elizabeth I.

As the authors say in their Introduction, Elizabeth I has 'never been anything less than the most glamorous of English monarchs ... the nearest thing England has ever had to a defining national heroine'. This study looks not at Elizabeth I as sovereign but at 'memories of her... in drama, poetry, historiography, propaganda, fiction and the cinema, from the aspiringly epic to the frankly kitsch'. The book follows a chronological format and whilst it is not exhaustive it does give readers a sample of the numerous forms in which the Virgin Queen has been presented over the past 400 years. The authors' obsession with se x seems rather out of place in what is meant to be a balanced study whilst some of their easy judgements on recent history may be questioned: the Silver Jubilee was not, as they claim, 'celebrated in a distinctly lukewarm manner'. There is a snide tone when speaking about our present Sovereign which may be thought clever by the writers but which is distasteful to civilised readers and is, moreover, totally irrelevant to the matter in hand. (T.B.)