Affairs of State
For her latest book, historical biographer Sarah Gristwood has turned to the story of Elizabeth I and Leicester. Here she discusses some of the risks and pleasures of writing about such a well-known relationship, a process that she found unexpectedly fascinating.
There is a shaming sense of proprietorship that sneaks over the writer of a historical biography – or of most historical biographies, anyway – a sense, however unrealistic, that no one has ever approached the subject before. It doesn’t work that way, if you’re writing about Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, one of the best-known relationships in English history. You feel more like the conservator of a national treasure: stripping off some bad restoration work; perhaps trying out some new techniques of exploration and display; but primarily just keeping the fabric intact until the next generation of caretakers happens by. What is more, you are soon made to realise – if you hadn’t before – that no one (not even the least historically minded) comes to this particular story fresh. It is one with which all of us have some sort of a history.
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