![]() ![]() And it is to this terrain of royal power that David Starkey now returns with his 20-part television series, Monarchy. Even as the skin sagged, so the white facial paste was layered on as she was wheeled before her audience. Elizabeth I was England's new protectress and was portrayed in those precisely calculated iconic terms for a newly Protestant population starved of the Catholic imagery it had once rather liked. England's only clever queen taught her court and people to see her as a return of the Virgin. The survival has involved adroit literary propaganda and use of the visuals. This being so, monarchy is a good subject for a historian who asks the central question: how did Alfred's successors manage to get away with it and still be here? Out of this equation have grown some of the most powerful English myths - those of national Blitz-like solidarity, of smoothly purposeful institutional evolution, and cheerfully harmonious relationships between the classes. The history of England is, alas, also the story of her monarchy. Hywel Williams, The Guardian (London), 03 Nov. ![]()
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