The throne of England hung in the balance, and every prince in Europe wanted to claim it.





When Elizabeth I ascended the throne in 1558 she became the most eligible woman in Europe. All saw the same prize: marry Elizabeth, rule England. Ambassadors flooded her court, armed with portraits, jewels and marriage proposals from princes, archdukes and kings. Sweden promised mountains of silver. Spain offered imperial protection. Austria pledged powerful alliances. Even Ivan the Terrible - already twice married - sent envoys bearing gifts and threats in equal measure.





For nearly five decades, Elizabeth kept them all waiting. She contrived to play each suitor against the other to her own end. A persistent Erik XIV wrote love letters for a decade, convinced he could win her hand. She strung along the charming French Duke of Alençon, exchanging rings before wriggling free with an alliance secured. Meanwhile, Robert Dudley, never far from Elizabeth's side, became the favourite who made foreign ambassadors tremble with envy.





Written with historian Sophie Shorland's unique eye for a gossipy aside, morbid titbit and acerbic wit, and drawing on ambassadorial dispatches, secret intelligence reports and Elizabeth's own letters, All the Queen's Men reveals how Elizabeth I turned the competition for her hand into foreign policy - using courtship as diplomacy, flirtation as statecraft, and her perpetually single status as the key to England's survival in the tangled web of European politics.



Sophie Shorland has a PhD in Early Modern English literature and is a former Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. She was a semi-finalist in the BBC's New Generation Thinkers competition and is the author of Queen Catherine's Court: Power and Rebellion in Restoration England.



Wonderfully rich in the seventeenth-century details of lives, loves, politics and power, in England and in Europe.



An often delightful biography... Shorland writes with the confidence of a much more experienced author. She has thankfully discarded the rigid conventions of academia in favour of telling a good story, embracing character, emotion and drama.



A splendidly sympathetic and sparky portrait, filled with unexpected images of a courageous woman who wasn't afraid to create her own circle and defend her beliefs at an English court dominated by her husband's mistresses.