Elizabeth cover art

Elizabeth

The Forgotten Years

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Elizabeth

By: John Guy
Narrated by: Alex Jennings
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.


An ageing queen, an heirless state, conspiracy all round: here is the court of Elizabeth I as never known before.

History has pictured Elizabeth I as Gloriana, an icon of strength and power -- and has focused on the early years of her reign. But in 1583, when Elizabeth is fifty, there is relentless plotting among her courtiers -- and still to come is the Spanish Armada and the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. We have not, until now, had the full picture.

This gripping and vivid portrait of her life and times -- often told in her own words (and including details such as her love of chess and marzipan) -- reveals a woman who was insecure, human ('You know I am no morning woman'), and unpopular even with the men who fought for her. This is the real Elizabeth, for the first time.


© John Guy 2016 (P) Penguin Audio 2016

 Europe Great Britain Politics & Activism Renaissance Royalty England Middle Ages Tudor

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Elizabeth I and Her Circle cover art
Henry VIII (Penguin Monarchs) cover art
The Six Wives of Henry VIII cover art
Elizabeth I cover art
Bloody Mary cover art
Killers of the King cover art
To Catch A King: Charles II's Great Escape cover art
Devil-Land cover art
Lancaster and York cover art
Queens of the Conquest cover art
Isabella cover art
Imprudent King cover art
Isabella of Castile cover art
The Tudors cover art

Critic reviews

A beautifully rounded portrait of both the woman and the queen . . . This is a masterful biography. (Amanda Foreman)
A gripping story of Queen Elizabeth's last years, authoritatively researched and engagingly recounted by the leading Tudor historian of our age (James Shapiro, author of 1599 and 1606)
One of the very best historians we have in the country . . . It is brilliant, vigorous history, and a triumph of storytelling and scholarship (Jessie Childs)
Guy's careful work with documents known and unknown, scattered throughout Europe's archives, allows him to paint a novel portrait of a complex - maybe even unknowable - queen (John Gallagher)
The best biography ever written of the Virgin Queen - a revisionist, sensitive, compelling, majestic masterwork that you can't put down (Simon Sebag-Montefiore)
John Guy's Elizabeth presents a beautifully rounded portrait of both the woman and the queen. Thanks to Guy's prodigious use of previously untapped material, we see, for the very first time, the full panoply of ambition and insecurity, plotting and deceit that marked the middle years of her reign. This is a masterful biography. (Amanda Foreman)
As you'd expect from John Guy, this is a very good read, a vivid and fascinating warts-and-all portrait of the ageing Elizabeth, backed by meticulous research (Claire Tomalin)
A gripping story of Queen Elizabeth's last years, authoritatively researched and engagingly recounted by the leading Tudor historian of our age. It will be of special interest to anyone interested in the political world in which Shakespeare's Elizabethan drama is steeped-from anxiety over royal succession to England's costly war in Ireland (James Shapiro, author of 1599 and 1606)
John Guy is arguably the world's leading expert on Tudor history. When he writes a book, especially this, his first on Elizabeth's life, it should be taken very seriously as having something new to say, and so it does ... a wonderful book and a magisterial account of the latter half of Elizabeth's reign that calmly reassesses every claim and myth by simply reading all the original manuscript correspondence. The result puts the record straight, but it also allows Guy to produce a pacy and compelling story (Jerry Brotton)
All stars
Most relevant
I have listened to this recording several times and it is so good. The subject matter, focusing on HMQ'S life post Armada, is a revelation to me. I have saved this to my favourites. i have the book as well and it is s riveting read. Alex Jennings narration, for me, cannot be faulted. The whole is an unalloyed pleasure.

Magnificent

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
From the excellent narrator to content 5 ⭐️ cannot stop listening . Highly recommended if you love history told at its finest

Love it !

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fascinating well researched but sometimes It felt this flawed but brilliant human was actually disliked by the author and perhaps he strayed too far - she wasn’t the myth but she was a substantial and impressive figure but some of the tropes about her ageing etc I felt were overdone and strayed into misogyny

Fascinating but may go too far

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Interesting book, concentrating mainly on the years of the extended conflict with Philip IiI, Elizabeth's complicated relationships with Leicester, Essex and her other war leaders and, of course, her close advisers. Here we look behind the persona of Gloriana to see the vacillating, emotional, proud, irascible, fiercely intelligent Elizabeth. It's a battle not only against foreign powers, but for who might most influence and persuade the Queen who often liked to rule by division. Not a light listen, but interesting and entertaining .

The War Years

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Listened in an unexpected three day Elizabeth-fest. Fascinating and hugely interesting. Particularly liked the discussions of early sources and biographies and how they had interpreted her motivations (and why) etc. Really well read by a narrator I know and like. I found it difficult to follow everything and occasionally had to go back and re listen to the beginning of a chapter. I should have taken more breaks but it was too interesting to do so. This saw me through severe winter weather days. Advice not to travel unless necessary was the perfect time to listen.

Engrossing - loved it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews