Biography
Dr Nicola Tallis is an independent author and historian, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She has worked as a curator, researcher, and lecturer, and specialises in the use of jewels in late medieval and Tudor England. Nicola has made numerous television and radio appearances, including on BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, Channel 5’s The Vikings, The Gunpowder Plot, Rich Lives, Poor Lives, and Channel 4’s Frankie Boyle’s Farewell to the Monarchy. Nicola is the author of five books, and her latest, Young Elizabeth: Princess. Prisoner. Queen. was Book of the Week in The Times.
Elizabeth I is one of England’s most famous monarchs, whose story as the ‘Virgin
Queen’ is well known. But queenship was by no means a certain path for Henry VIII’s
younger daughter, who spent the majority of her early years as a girl with an uncertain
future.
Before she was three years old Elizabeth had been both a princess, and then a bastard
following the brutal execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn. After losing several stepmothers
and then her father, the teenage Elizabeth was confronted with the predatory attentions of Sir
Thomas Seymour. The result was devastating, causing a heartbreaking rift with her beloved
stepmother Katherine Parr.
Elizabeth was placed in further jeopardy when she was implicated in the Wyatt Rebellion of
1554 – a plot to topple her half-sister, Mary, from her throne. Imprisoned in the Tower of
London where her mother had lost her life, under intense pressure and interrogation Elizabeth
adamantly protested her innocence. Though she was eventually liberated, she spent the
remainder of Mary’s reign under a dark cloud. On 17 November 1558, however, the
uncertainty of Elizabeth’s future came to an end when she succeeded to the throne at the age
of twenty-five.
When Elizabeth became queen, she had already endured more tumult than many monarchs
experienced in a lifetime. This colourful and immensely detailed biography charts Elizabeth’s
turbulent and unstable upbringing, exploring the dangers and tragedies that plagued her early
life. Nicola Tallis draws on primary sources written by Elizabeth herself and her
contemporaries, providing an extensive and thorough study of an exceptionally resilient
youngster whose early life would shape the queen she later became. The heart racing story of
Elizabeth’s youth as she steered her way through perilous waters towards England’s throne is
one of the most sensational of its time.
