#might as well provide a recommendation to balance out the snark so

[tvwolfsnake]

sometimes it feels like people on this site don’t know there are movies that are a) more than ten years old, b) not in english, or c) more than ten years old and not in english

[maximumphilosopheranchor]

Have you read 'Elizabeth: The Fogotten Years' by John Guy? I've heard nothing but bad things about him, but is he really so unreliable? I've seen a reasonably cheap copy that I might get for my birthday, but it depends on your opinion. Thank you.

Yes, I have read it. I really appreciate the trust you put in me - thank you so much! - but if you want to buy it, I will not dissuade you. I can only share my thoughts on the book.

I didn’t like it but not because John Guy would be incompetent. On the contrary, he is one of the most highly regarded Tudor historians working today. Unlike Allison Weir, for example, he knows his stuff. I don’t question his academical credentials. However, precisely because of his vast knowledge in the field and academical credentials and the fact that his word bears weight the more is expected and demanded from him than Alison Weir. So if I see him leaving out things from his narrative that may change the picture he paints naturally it’s not because he is ill-informed - again, he is not Alison Weir or Philippa Gregory, he knows his stuff. Why then? My answer is because they don’t fit in his thesis but since he maintains that his version is the true one thus, in my opinion, indirectly discrediting the work of his colleagues which doesn’t match his vision he comes across as a hypocrite.

My major complaints are:

He is very biased against Elizabeth. Can’t help but think that his attitude has something to do with the fact that Elizabeth executed his favourite Mary Queen of Scots and it was Elizabeth who survived and not Mary. He tries to spin every fact to Elizabeth’s disfavour. Even more, he manages to spin facts that seem to speak well of Elizabeth to her disfavour! In this respect very characteristic is his treatment of John Harrington’s quote about Elizabeth as sunshine and thunder where he completely ignores the sunshine part. Elizabeth is stripped of all her charm and kindness in this book. Consequently he refuses to those close around her like Cecil and Dudley any sincere affection towards Elizabeth, every gesture, every sign of it is attributed to flattery to get what they wanted from her. She is constantly called ‘childless/barren spinster’ throughout the book as if her childless state were distasteful to Guy, and, of course, his take as fits for a true hagiographer of Mary Queen of Scots is that she envied and was jealous of other women’s beauty and motherhood, naturally he doesn’t bother to prove it with evidence. He doesn’t bother to provide evidence for his claim that Elizabeth abandoned Mary Sidney either. Speaking of politics, Guy marginalizes Elizabeth and overstates Cecil’s role in government. He even goes so far to suggest that until the mid-1580s it was Cecil who ruled the country and Elizabeth was a little more than a figurehead. And frankly I detected misogynist vibes in his portrayal of Elizabeth. Overall, as one reviewer aptly put it, he portrays Elizabeth as less than she was.

Too much significance is attributed to Mary’s execution on Elizabeth’s life. But again nothing else can be expected of him given his partiality to Mary.

The problems of the 1590s are exaggerated, consequently the successes of the Elizabethan regime are downplayed.

He often contradicts himself. Thus, on the one hand, he puts a big emphasis and importance on the manuscript sources, contemporary sources and dismiss calendars of state papers which is a fair stance. On the other hand, if Elizabeth should be shown in a bad light, calendars of state papers and the 17th century sources suddenly will do well. Simon Adams reviewing his biography hagiography of Mary Queen of Scots pointed out ‘Guy’s curiously casual handling of evidence’ and I can’t help but suspect that something like that is going here as well.    

Did I say he consciously leaves out things that don’t suit his agenda? This applies to his discourse of Elizabeth’s historiography in the preface. He briefly discusses a few works of older historians and authors the newest of which is John Neale’s biography of Elizabeth firstly published in the 1930s and sharply attacks Neale’s view of Elizabeth for being too positive but completely withholds the mention of existence of revisionism in Elizabeth’s historiography since the 1980s and doesn’t discuss recent historiography on her, the works of his colleagues, that he himself amply uses in this book as can be seen from his footnotes and references. But my hardback copy contains no bibliographical list of these works, only a list of primary sources. It’s cheating. The result is that Guy makes a reader to believe that he is like the only modern historian criticizing Elizabeth, that until his book no one, except for Froude, has done it and that his take of Elizabeth’s personality is the new one. Which is patently false. Likewise, it’s not true that the 1590s are the ‘forgotten’ years, there are much research done of them in last decades. He is withholding crucially important information thus manipulating his reader and I really really don’t like it.    

Speaking of Guy trashing Neale. I found it funny that Guy so much snarks about Neale loving Elizabeth, while Guy himself doesn’t shy away from loving Mary Queen of Scots, writing a hagiographical account of her life that, in my opinion, supersedes in its sympathy Neale’s work on Elizabeth, and simultaneously insisting that what he writes is the true life of Mary. Double standards.

I also didn’t like Guy’s writing style and narrative tone - it’s overly snarky, cynical, even aggressive.

If you look for a balanced account of Elizabeth’s personality and her reign, this is not the right book. Notwithstanding the author’s loud claims, it doesn’t represent ‘the real’ Elizabeth, it’s not a definite biography of her and I certainly don’t recommend it as a first read about Elizabeth not least because it covers only the part - from the mid-1580s to 1603- of her long reign. But keeping in mind that one should not take Guy’s word as gospel, especially concerning feelings of historical figures, he is very good when he doesn’t allow his bias to rule him and there were parts I liked and found very informative. For example, his analysis of Elizabeth’s clothing in the audience she gave to the French envoy De Maisse.  And I can’t deny that bigger work than many popular history authors manage is put into the book.