Book - The Elizabethans

The Elizabethans by A.N. Wilson  The age of Elizabeth the First is arguably one of the two great eras in the history of England (the other being the reign of Victoria).  It is an age of exploration, the arts, the creation of the church tradition that would become my own, the birth of the tiny island nation into a power in its own right (rather than being an appendage to European holdings) and all led by a woman of brilliance and ruthlessness.

Sadly you will have struggle to piece that story together from A.N. Wilson's book on the subject.  The best image I can give you for how this book tells this story is to ask you to imagine (or remember) a professor at college who was deep with the knowledge of his or her subject.  Knew it front to back and back to front.  But who had the unfortunate habit of becoming distracted and wandering off in mid-lecture on one subject to examine some other subject that may have only the most tenuous of connections with the first.  That's the way this book reads.  If you are looking for a linear telling of the story of The Virgin Queen's reign you're going to struggle.  There is a linear progression but the side trips just strip away any sense of the overall flow of history.

Let me offer two examples:
A chapter titled "Elizabethan Women".  Now here's a concept that sounded fascinating.  How did the rule of a Queen as absolute monarch affect the place of the rest of her gender?  The chapter is 18 pages long and the first 10 are mostly about women (there's a long discussion of marriage but that was the central issue for both Elizabeth and the ladies of her age) although it should be noted that the discussion is only of "gentlewomen" and no mention is made of the "lower classes" (a fairly consistent approach throughout).  Most of the rest of the chapter is about architecture.  It is led into by the story of Bess Hardwick who through marriage and the death of her husbands become one of the kingdom's great landholders.  But she's only a launching pad for 8 pages of discussion that have nothing to do with the Elizabethan Women.

Likewise a chapter on Sir Philip Sidney.  Sidney is heir to one of the influential families of the age.  His greatest claims to fame are his writing, especially his prose "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia" and his sonnets, plus dying young from his wounds taken in battle.  His funeral was the largest ever seen in London.  On the whole he was a bit of a pop star at the time.  This chapter runs 11 pages and Sidney isn't even mentioned for the first four.  The next four give us the history of his brief life (32 at the time of his death).  The final three pages might possibly be described as outlining his legacy but they really aren't.  They discuss his contemporaries in the arts with virtually no reference to him at all.  Given that he was considered one of the great stars of his time both at court and in the public it strikes me as a paltry offering.

But that's pretty much the way the book goes.  It wanders this way and that.  When Wilson gets his teeth into the story of some place, event or person the book is a joy to read.  Beyond the authorial wandering you are also burdened with quotes done in the original Elizabethan spelling although others are "translated".  There didn't seem to be rhyme nor reason to which ones were or weren't put into modern spellings.  It becomes one hurdle after another at times.

If you want a well written (if somewhat opinionated) outline of the Elizabethan Age this is not a bad addition. If what you want is a clear and concise examination of the Age I can only hope there's something else out there.  The book only just squeaks into its rating class.
Rating - *** Worth A Look