Stuart Spotlight: Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts, by Nadine Akkerman

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

The dazzling biography of one of history's most misunderstood queens

Elizabeth Stuart is one the most misrepresented - and underestimated - figures of the seventeenth century. Labelled a spendthrift more interested in the theatre and her pet monkeys than politics or her children, and long pitied as 'The Winter Queen', the direct ancestor of Elizabeth II was widely misunderstood. Nadine Akkerman's biography reveals an altogether different woman, painting a vivid picture of a queen forged in the white heat of European conflict.

Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI and I, was married to Frederick V, Elector Palatine in 1613. The couple were crowned King and Queen of Bohemia in 1619, only to be deposed and exiled to the Dutch Republic in 1620. Elizabeth then found herself at the epicentre of the Thirty Years' War and the Civil Wars, political and military struggles that defined seventeenth-century Europe. 

Following her husband's death in 1632, Elizabeth fostered a cult of widowhood, dressing herself and her apartments in black, and conducted a long and fierce political campaign to regain her children's birthright - by force, if possible - wielding her pen with the same deft precision with which she once speared boars from horseback. Through deep immersion in the archives and masterful detective work, Akkerman overturns the received view of Elizabeth Stuart, showing her to be a patron of the arts and canny stateswoman with a sharp wit and a long memory.

On returning to England in 1661, Elizabeth Stuart found a country whose people still considered her their 'Queen of Hearts'. Akkerman's biography reveals the impact Elizabeth Stuart had on both England and Europe, demonstrating that she was more than just the grandmother of George I.

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About the Author

Prof. Nadine Akkerman is an archival detective, biographer, cryptographer, editor and spymistress. An acclaimed literary historian, she is the award-winning author of Invisible Agents. Her latest book is Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration, which she co-wrote with Dr Pete Langman.  Nadine is also the author of the authoritative biography of the sometime Queen of Bohemia Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI/I, and editor of The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart (3 vols) - it has been said that the only person who has read more of Elizabeth’s letters than Nadine is Elizabeth herself. If historians take one thing from these works, it is that Elizabeth Stuart should never be called 'The Winter Queen' again.  A popular public speaker in the UK, Nadine has been a guest on Woman’s Hour, Histories of the Unexpected podcast and on the SkyArts series Treasures of the British Library (with Julia Donaldson) to name but a few. Nadine is Professor in Early Modern Literature and Culture at Leiden University, the Netherlands, where she lives in a seventeenth-century canal house with her partner, novelist Pete Langman (when they’re not in the UK), and hopes to have a cat soon. Follow her on Twitter: @misswalsingham and Bluesky ‪@misswalsingham.bsky.social‬