If you could choose to live in any period of history, which would it be? For me there was only ever one answer: the Elizabethan. The writers were a major part of it – Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe and Jonson, those supreme wizards with words. Then there were the splendid soldiers, sailors and adventurers – Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh. I may even have fancied myself in a doublet and ruff. But the crucial factor was Elizabeth herself, the extraordinarily wise and courageous Virgin Queen.