Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots: Two Queens One Future

Broadcast Mon 4 Oct 2021

Elizabeth and Mary were women of incredible charisma and power. In a lecture specially tailored around our upcoming exhibition, John Guy tells the story of their fraught and tangled relationship. Set against the background of religious turmoil in England and Scotland and civil war in France, it began with both queens seeking a political settlement. Mary was far from Elizabeth’s mortal enemy, but events led them down a path of increasing danger from which only one could emerge victorious.

At what point did a reconciliation become impossible? The lecture will reveal, and the exhibition display, the missing evidence showing that Elizabeth longed for one, just months before she signed Mary’s death warrant.

John Guy is a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and an award-winning historian and biographer. His many books include Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years, Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel, Victim and A Daughter’s Love: Thomas and Margaret More. He has presented or contributed to numerous television documentaries and appears regularly on BBC Radio’s flagship cultural programmes. His writing has appeared in The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Economist, London Review of Books and The Literary Review. The 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots, starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie, was adapted from his biography.