Philip Sidney: A Double Life

Among the gilded youth of Elizabethan England, none was more golden than Philip Sidney. Courtier, poet, soldier, diplomat-he was one of the most promising young men of his time. Son of Elizabeth I's deputy in Ireland, nephew and heir to her favorite, Leicester, he received an exemplary education. On leaving Oxford University he was tipped for high office-and was even a candidate to inherit the throne. But Philip soon found himself caught up in the intricate politics of Elizabeth's court and forced to become as Machiavellian as everyone around him if he was to achieve his ambitions.

Against a backdrop of Elizabethan intrigue and the battle between the Protestants and the Catholics for predominance in Europe, Alan Stewart tells the riveting story of Philip Sidney's struggle to succeed. Seeing that his continental allies had a greater sense of his importance than his English contemporaries, Philip turned his attention to Europe. He was made a French baron at seventeen, corresponded with leading foreign scholars, considered marriage proposals from two princesses and, in 1586, he cemented his fame by dying on the battlefront in the Low Countries at the tragically young age of thirty-one.