I know I have the body of a weakened feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of

a king and of a king of England too.

So spoke Elizabeth I as she reviewed her troops at Tilbury on the 18th of August 1588,

the summer of the Spanish Armada.

As she was by the standards of the age and old woman with black teeth and a red wig, did

not prevent her words from serving as one of the great rallying cries in English history.

And Elizabeth herself, from serving in the imaginings of her contemporaries, has the

very model of a great ruler, Gloriana the Virgin Queen.

And that's a role that basically she continues to serve to the present day.

Dominic Sambrook with me as ever.

I realised that this is actually the first time we've done a podcast devoted to one person.

Yes.

And I do you think that she merits this accolade?

I hope you do.

Well, it's otherwise I want to be doing it.

I obviously was holding out for a podcast on the life of James Callahan, but weirdly,

it doesn't seem as much demand among the listeners as I had thought.

So I think Elizabeth of Versa's a good second best.

Of course, she is a colossal figure in the kind of iconography of England.

And I think actually weirdly post Brexit, you know, this woman defying, you know, the European

invader.

I mean, she's sort of been shined in our collective imagination, think of all the films and stuff.

...