The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer

The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer

We think of Queen Elizabeth I as 'Gloriana': the most powerful English woman in history. We think of her reign (1558-1603) as a golden age of maritime heroes, like Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Richard Grenville and Sir Francis Drake, and of great writers, such as Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. But what was it actually like to live in Elizabethan England? If you could travel to the past and walk the streets of London in the 1590s, where would you stay? What would you eat? What would you wear? Would you really have a sense of it being a glorious age? And if so, how would that glory sit alongside the vagrants, diseases, violence, sexism and famine of the time? In this book Ian Mortimer answers the key questions that a prospective traveller to late sixteenth-century England would ask. Applying the groundbreaking approach he pioneered in his bestselling Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, the Elizabethan world unfolds around the reader. He shows a society making great discoveries and winning military victories and yet at the same time being troubled by its new-found awareness. It is a country in which life expectancy at birth is in the early thirties, people still starve to death and Catholics are persecuted for their faith. Yet it produces some of the finest writing in the English language and some of the most magnificent architecture, and sees Elizabeth's subjects settle in America and circumnavigate the globe. Welcome to a country that is, in all its contradictions, the very crucible of the modern world.

Ian Mortimer manages to inform and delight in equal measure-- Sue Baker * The Bookseller *
It is a magnificent social history, rich and scholarly, but with the verve and intrigue of a great novel -- Rory Clements
As Mortimer puts it, 'sometimes the past will inspire you, sometimes it will make you weep'. What it won't do, thanks to this enthralling book, is leave you unmoved -- Kathryn Hughes * Mail on Sunday *
An astonishingly colourful portrait of an astonishingly colourful era, one sophisticated enough to include, and make sense of, all its contradictions. It is as if Mortimer has restored an old painting, stripping it of its cloaking layers of brown varnish to reveal its vitality and life afresh -- Toby Clements * Daily Telegraph *
Mortimer brings...depth and flair to the age of Shakespeare and the Virgin Queen. From dental hygiene to table manners, the findings fascinate - even if we don't wish that we were there * Independent *

Dr Ian Mortimer is the author of the bestselling Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, eight other books and many peer-reviewed articles on English history between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and was awarded the Alexander Prize (2004) for his work on the social history of medicine in seventeenth-century England. In June 2011, the University of Exeter awarded him a higher doctorate (D.Litt.) by examination, on the strength of his historical work. He also writes historical fiction, published under his middle names (James Forrester). He lives with his wife and three children on the edge of Dartmoor, in Devon. For further information about him and a full bibliography, see his website: www.ianmortimer.com.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781847921147
ISBN 10	1847921140
Title	The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
Author	Ian Mortimer
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Vintage Publishing
Year published	2012-03-01
Number of pages	432
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable