The portrait of a man who is a hero to his biographer, but who was well hated by his contemporaries on many counts. One of the great Elizabethans, he stood for many facets of a colorful period, and this account of his varied and eventful life paints at the same time a vivid picture of the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts. Well-written, scholarly, just avoids being a bit pedantic at times and is, on the whole, good reading.