Anna Whitelock’s ELIZABETH’S BEDFELLOWS, published in the US as THE QUEEN’S BED, has won the 2015 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

‘Anna Whitelock’s skilful and detailed history will bring you closer than seems possible to this glittering, infuriating, fascinating woman’.   Hilary Mantel

‘With this dazzling portrait, Whitelock takes her place among the foremost, and most enthrallingly readable, historians of the Tudors’  Miranda Seymour in the Sunday Times

Elizabeth I acceded to the throne in 1558, restoring the Protestant faith to England.  At the heart of the queen’s court was her bedchamber, closely guarded by the favoured women who helped her dress, washed her clothing, looked after her jewels and shared her bed.

Witnesses to the face and body beneath the make-up and to flirtations and rumoured illicit dalliances, Elizabeth’s bedfellows loyally guarded her honour.  The scene of both pan-European drama and personal tragedy, Elizabeth’s bedchamber was highly politicised and Elizabeth’s private life was of public, political concern.  The women who attended her were the guardians of the truth about her health, chastity and fertility and loyally guarded her honou

This riveting, revealing history of the politics of intimacy uncovers the feminised world of the Elizabethan court, establishing Elizabeth’s women as key players

“Whitelock’s fearless approach to Elizabeth is not like that of Essex. She, too, has burst into the bedroom and shown us the Queen in her most private state. This is an intimate history of the court and a brilliant history of intimacy” – Frances Wilson, Mail on Sunda

“With the lively imagination of the dramatist and the rigor of an academic, Whitelock discards the chastity belt of conventional royal history and presents Elizabeth in terms of the intimate politics of her life”  The Times

Elizabeth’s Bedfellows has been optioned by BBC Drama for a six-part BBC 1 drama series

About the Author

Anna Whitelock.pngAnna Whitelock is a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at Royal Holloway, University of London.  She has written for The Guardian, BBC History Magazine, History Today, Times Literary Supplement and the New York Times and regularly appears on television and radio.  Elizabeth’s Bedfellows is her second book.

Praise for Mary Tudor

‘An impressive and powerful debut’  - David Starkey

‘Impressive.  This book is a resurrection…. Whitelock’s brilliant account commands sympathy for Mary’  - Jenny Uglow,  Financial Times

‘Whitelock’s greatest achievement is her portrait of Mary as a woman as well as a queen – sketching her private tragedies, rejections and physical illness – but she always retains the context in which these personal struggles unfolded’  Independent on Sunday

‘Anna Whitelock tells her story with engaging verve, full of lush detail…the wretched woman has had a pretty bad popular image, this book goes a good way towards restoring the balance’  Sunday Telegraph

‘Whitelock blazes through the Protestant burnings that earned her the name “Bloody Mary” and excels in her timely portrait of this religious fanatic’  - Frances Wilson, Sunday Times Books of the Year

Sales

UK – Bloomsbury

US – Farrar Straus

Sweden – Historiska Media

Russia - Centerpolygraph