Elizabeth And Leicester

The real story behind the romance of two of the most powerful people in Tudor history.

Few relationships fire our imagination like that of Elizabeth I and her 'bonnie sweet Robin' - the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley. But it has been almost half a century since any book set out specifically to examine and disentangle the emotive, often contradictory facts about their lifelong love.

They met - it's alleged - when both were imprisoned in the Tower of London. Soon after Elizabeth was queen came the scandalised letters from ambassadors of her infatuation with the married Robert Dudley - to be followed a mere two years later by the suspicious death of his wife Amy. Speculation ran for years that Elizabeth and Robert in their turn would marry. Instead, they developed a working partnership, and - an even more extraordinary intimacy - a bond of mutual dependence and affection.

By the time Robert died he had been Elizabeth's councillor and commander of her army, sat by her bed in sickness and represented her on state occasions. But she had also humiliated him, made him dance attendance on her other suitors and tried to have him clapped in prison when finally he broke loose and married again. Riven by uncertainties, fuelled by scandal and intrigue, the relationship between a reigning queen and the most hated man in England could never be an easy one.

'Elizabeth And Leicester' is a portrait - at times a startlingly intimate one - of an affair between two people at a crucial moment in history; of a relationship where, very unusually, a woman held all the power; of a love that transcended the centuries, and still speaks to us today.