Elizabethan Society: High and Low Life, 1558-1603 | Wilson, Derek

A vivid account of Elizabethan society through the lives of representative men and women, from landowners, financiers and soldiers to professional criminals



We tend to approach the reign of 'Gloriana' with awe and admiration at the flowering of the English Renaissance, the achievements of Shakespeare and Drake and the defeat of the Spanish Armada. But Elizabeth I's reign was multi-faceted: not everything about it was glittering.



Derek Wilson skilfully interweaves the personal histories of a representative selection of figures, from every level of society, with the major themes of the period to create a compelling account of life in England in the late sixteenth century. This is not just a book about the everyday life of Elizabethans, but rather a study of what it meant to be an Elizabethan.



In getting to grips with this strange world - simultaneously drab and colourful, static and expansive, traditionalist and 'modern' - Wilson enables us to understand what life was really like for Elizabethans.



Praise for the author's In the Lion's Court



'Brilliant, endlessly readable . . . vivid, immediate history, accurate, complex and tinged with personality.' Sunday Herald