Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Facts, Difficult Read
Review: This was one of the most difficult books that I have ever read due to the fact that technically, it is a very intricate book. You are bombarded with a lot of facts: dates, people, events. I found myself only being able to read 10-15 pages a night before I developed a headache. This book has a lot to offer - there's a lot to digest! Was it interesting, yes it was. Am I glad I read it, yes I am. Just don't expect a an easy read - you really have to keep your focus otherwise you'll get lost in the vast sea of information.
Rating: 
Summary: This is the one book on Elizabeth you should read
Review: Alison Weir's history of Elizabeth gives you the great Queen's life almost on a day-by-day account. She really was the great queen you always suspected she was: learned, flirtatious, cunning, altogether a great woman in history. Through sheer guile she navigated her way through the shark-pit of male-dominated, Catholic-dominated European politics and resisted, valiantly, both empire and marriage. She also, remarkably, avoided war during her reign though both France and Spain were chomping at the bit for it. Weir shows how she was frugal, prudent, and mindful of the welfare of the people. (Yet her court was reputed to be the most glittering in Europe at the time, the most advanced, festive and learned, as Weir shows.) A little known fact Wier brings out is that she didn't collect taxes for ten years. There is a reason why the people celebrated her ascension for a hundred years afterward, and Weir makes that plain.Weir also dispells the myth of Mary Queen of Scots, who was in reality a very foolish woman who lived lavishly on Elizabeth's generosity for nearly two decades, all the while plotting against Elizabeth--and it's a damn good thing Mary was unsuccessful, because Catholicism would have restrained capitalism, which made us all rich. This is the one book on Elizabeth you should read; my hat is off to Alison Weir.
Rating: 
Summary: A Large Mess
Review: Weir's boigraphy about Queen Elizabeth I was a completely disorganized mess. Way too many details that really only provide a gloss of the period. I think that many of the people who found that these particular details give them a sense of the period think that the period is about clothes and what people ate, rather than how people thought. There were so many grammar mistakes and so many run-on sentences that made sentence after sentence a tiresome read. I don't know who edited this book, but they really went comma crazy. The book reads with the tone of an episode of 90210. I think Weir got bogged down with details and neglected to take a point-of-view on the subject matter, because there are so many points of view in the work, that one is apt to get confused. She said that she felt like she was writing four books in her introduction. I just understand why she didn't make four parts in the book. Weir doesn't really plumb into the events of the day and their momentous importance. Throughout the book, I am told that Elizabeth had a brilliant mind, but there were no examples of how she came up with her policies, except for the policies of stringing potential suitors along. This book is a confused boigraphy that doesn't know where to begin, how to get organized, and how to end.
Rating:
Summary: The Scholar Submits
Review: Yeah, O.K., I'm a Shakespeare scholar -- the kind that writes articles 7 people in the world read (and one of them's my husband, and I think he only reads the beginning and the end). I knew I shouldn't like this book. I was ready not to like this book. I was ready to indulge in a feeding frenzy of nit-picking. The problem is, I really liked the book. Really. Sure, this is a popular treatment of Elizabeth I's life, but what does that mean? It means that Weir occasionally glosses over complexities and that her prose is jargon free. She doesn't enter any spiral-of-doom of arcane theory, and she seems to have a good time romping around the Renaissance. I couldn't put the darn book down. Perhaps what shows the honesty of this book is an admission Weir makes herself: she set out to show Elizabeth I's private life, and found she could not. No reader should miss that this is a world in which the very concept of a private life has yet to be articulated in any way familiar to us. Weir didn't come up empty (as she seems to think); she enables us, through her presentation, to realize the ways in which privacy in the Renaissance *isn't*. Weir searched for the inner Elizabeth and didn't find her, making us wonder about the entire issue of interiority. I wanted more, of course, more subtlety, more arcane documents, a more clearly articulated point-of-view (and less psychoanalysis, though there isn't much). But this book is sound -- and it's not to be condescended to. I dare attach my name to that.
Rating:
Summary: magnificent job
Review: Alison Wier is a new favorite of mine. She was able to take me back to Elizabeths' time. You could feel and even smell what would be around you. I really believe that Elizabeth was the best Queen, or Prince, ever for England. Alison, somehow, has even etched Elizabeths' personality into her readers heart. Her soul, as you will, comes to you. I was very impressed by the amount of knowledge Alison just carries around about this unusual, magnanimous, beautiful, virgin Queen. I have always loved the history of England and the royal family. This book will always be one of my favorites.
Rating:
Summary: Great job!
Review: I've read a lot of biographies on Elizabeth I of England, but this one is the most thorough and interesting. Writers usually get too bogged down in either factual detail or into scandals/myths. Weir does neither. She simply conveys all of the important stuff any one would want to know. I also liked how she explained what Elizabethan England was like, how people thought, and what their customs were. And after reading her book I've become fascinated with Lettice Knollys, her rival in love. Does anyone have any info on her?
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Summary: Popular history..
Review: This book is the culmination of a series of books Weir wrote on the English Kings and Queens from Edward the III to QEI -- approximately the collection of royalty Shakespeare covers in his plays. If you want to understand the plays a little better and don't want to become to immersed in historical detail, Weir's books suit the purpose. Although Weir writes 'popular' history, she does her homework. She does not compile evidence selectively to support a preconceived theory, or exclude information that does not suit her purpose. She mentions the conflicting material and provides her reasons why she reaches the conclusions she does. She uses primary sources and makes her own inquiries. She does not rely solely on secondary material already subjected to interpretation by a third party. Weir's book on Elizabeth is especially useful if you want to know more about the relationship between Elizabeth I and Leicester. It's also useful if you're planning a trip to England and want to be more informed about the sites you're sure to visit.
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Summary: Alison Weir, an amazing biographer
Review: "The Life of Elizabeth the I" is one of the greatest books I have ever read (next to "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" also by Mrs. Weir). Weir does full justice to this subject and provides an informative and intellegent read. I am writing a school paper on Elizabeth thanks to Weir because she has gotten me so wrapped up in the Tudor period in England. Not to mention "Elizabeth"-the movie- starring Cate Blanchett is breathtaking. I highly reccomend renting/buying
Rating:
Summary: Superb biography
Review: "Our blessed Queen was more than a man and, in truth, something less than a woman." These words by the Queen's Secretary of State describe the enigma that Alison Weir explores and attempts to resolve in this magnificent biography. In the case of such a complex personality as Elizabeth's, no one can expect to find the final answers, but Weir presents the alternative explanations clearly and forcefully. Scholarly without being pompous, readable without writing down to the reader, informative without losing the human element in a welter of detail, The Life of Elizabeth is a one-of-a-kind biography. The book leaves unexplained why Elizabeth never married, why she surrounded herself with young, handsome male admirers yet very likely never consummated a relationship with any of them, and why this ruler of a small country - with fewer residents than present day Toronto or Miami - became adored by her subjects, admired by a host of foreign rulers, and amazingly successful in both reigning and ruling for forty-five long years. The unexplained is no fault of Weir's. She shows her competence and talent in this sympathetic description of an amazingly convoluted personality. Elizabeth was a woman of strong personal courage, superior intelligence, and superb diplomatic skills, along with being a consummate actress. Extraordinarily independent of mind, she nevertheless surrounded herself with, and gave ear to, wise counselors. Even her flaws she used to advantage. Terribly fearful of marriage, for whatever reason, she yet dangled the possibility of matrimony before reigning monarchs and her many slavish courtiers alike - always to England's benefit. Surprisingly tolerant and humane by the standards of her age, Elizabeth could wreak terrible vengeance on those who threatened her throne. She was truly a passionate woman but, as Weir states, "When it came to a decision, she compelled her head to rule her heart." Elizabeth's long and stormy relationship with Robert Dudley dominates the first part of the book. Her years of rivalry with Mary Queen of Scots fills much of the middle portion. And, finally, the book ends with the meteoric rise and equally rapid downfall of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. While the historic events of Elizabeth's long rule - world exploration, the Armada, the literary triumphs of Marlowe, Shakespeare and others - are recognized, the emphasis throughout The Life of Elizabeth is the Queen herself and those with whom she dealt on a day-to-day basis. Granted that good fortune smiled upon this Queen, that a "Protestant" wind scattered Catholic Spain's Armada, that the powerful nations of Europe were too busy squabbling among themselves to give much attention to half of a small island off the coast of France, and that the worst of the religious turbulence of Henry VIII's rule had finally subsided - Good Queen Bess was still in large measure responsible for the stable, orderly government that characterized her forty-five year reign and that made possible the glory that was England. We owe much to Alison Weir for having so well described this woman who was "more than a man." John A. Broussard, PhD for The Charlotte Austin Review
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Summary: Shoddy Scholarship
Review: I read only four pages of this book in a bookstore before I realized that Weir is not to be trusted. For the section on Elizabeth's 1575 progress visit to Kenilworth, Weir took almost all her information directly from Robert Laneham's eyewitness letter describing the event. Despite the fact that she follows his narrative almost exactly, she gets several pieces of information wrong, including the dates. She states Elizabeth stayed ten days when it was actually nineteen. Obviously these details aren't important in themselves, but I have to wonder: if Weir makes such errors when she's just copying off of a well-known and widely-available document, how careful is her scholarship?
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