Elizabeth Apprenticeship Author:David Starkey An abused child, yet confident of her destiny to reign, a woman in a man's world, passionately sexual yet - she said - a virgin, Elizabeth I was to be famed as England's most successful ruler. This absorbing new book, by concentrating on the early years from her birth in 1533 to her accession in 1558, shows how her experiences of danger and adve... more »nture formed her remarkable character and shaped her opinions and beliefs.
For in her youth she had experienced every vicissitude of fortune and every extreme of condition. She had been Princess and inheritrix of England - then bastardized and disinherited. At sixteen she was head of a great princely household. Not much later she was an accused traitor on the verge of execution in the Tower. Among all this, she had been taught the most advanced curriculum of the day. But it was her lessons in the school of life that mattered more - and taught her humanity.« less