In this major biography of the queen, Wallace MacCaffrey focuses on Elizabeth's career as a practicing politician, taking into account her testing personal experience, her temperament, her own view of her role and the constraints she frequently faced whether imposed by the inheritance from her predecessors or by contemporary events. The Elizabeth who emerges from these pages has a more human appearance than the stiff, richly garbed, bejeweled Elizabeth of the royal portraits. She is more fallible. And more interesting. 'Queen Elizabeth (1533-1609) ruled England for more than 40 years, marking an age and establishing her country as a significant power. MacCaffrey, a professor emeritus of history at Harvard, concentrates on the queen as a politician and analyzes her successes and failures in this scholarly study of her statecraft. He highlights such historical events as the Spanish Armada (1585) and the establishment of the Church of England (1599). The queen's decision to send an army to fight Spanish rule in the Netherlands plunged her country into war; she was, however, able to supplant Catholicism and establish Protestantism as the state religion without causing a civil revolt at home. As potrayed by MacCaffrey, the strength of Elizabeth's reign rested on her great popularity; but she was frequently plagued by indecision, one of her few weaknesses.'