BBC關於英國歷史的紀錄片《BBC英國史 A History of Britain》
對於一個不了解英國歷史的人來說，本片是很好的教材。本片再現了英國文明的成長曆程，從巨石文化的新石器時代到輝煌的伊莉莎白時代，穿越17世紀暴亂的國內戰爭到日不落大不列顛帝國。這是一個生動的、有些情景可以說是血腥的故事。《A History of Britain》由15個章節組成，喜歡英式英語發音的人士必須收藏的一套材料。
第07章：The Body of the Queen 女王的一生（1558——1603）
這是關於兩位女皇的故事——務實的精明謹慎的伊莉莎白和蘇格蘭的瑪麗。伊莉莎白清楚身為一個女子要統治一個國家十分困難，並且要控制宗教世界,更加困難。當瑪麗離開英格蘭，她發現她自己已經被囚禁，唯一的自由就是聽從伊莉莎白女王的命令。伊莉莎白完全掌握了英國的命運，在英國呼風喚雨，經過了宗教的改革和，戰勝西班牙無敵艦隊之後，她成就了偉大的大不列顛。
英語字幕文本：
In her last sickness, with the sense of her end coming on fast, Elizabeth I had the ring she had worn since her coronationfiled away from the royal finger.
It was a tricky operation, for the skin had grown in over the gold, but then it was supposed to be a tight fit.
This was, in a manner of speaking, her wedding band, put on when she had joined herself to England, 45 years earlier.
Now it seemed the two were to be put asunder.
She was supposed to be immortal, of course.
And the odd thing was, despite the garish auburn fright wig, the white face mask and the wrinkled bosom, foreign diplomats who saw her at court and had no reason to be gallant, swore they could still see the young woman, no more than 20 years of age.
It doesn't do to be too starry-eyed about the Virgin Queen.
Elizabeth I was only too obviously made of flesh and blood.
She was vain, spiteful, arrogant, she was frequently unjust, and she was often maddeningly indecisive.
But she was also brave, shockingly clever, an eyeful to look at and on occasions she was genuinely wise.
In other words, she had all the qualities it took to make the genius politician she undoubtedly was.
Just a few feet away from Elizabeth's tomb in Westminster Abbey lies the body of another woman, Mary, Queen of Scots, who had haunted and fascinated Elizabeth for so much of her life.
No virgin, that's for sure.
No politician either.
A complete disaster as a ruler, you would have to say, but Mary managed something that eluded Elizabeth.
She reproduced.
This is the story of two queens and, more importantly, two women - one a politician, the other a mother.
It 's the story of a painful birth, the union of England and Scotland, the birth of Britain.
A cherished tradition has it that when Elizabeth heard the news that she was to become queen, on November 17th, 1558, she was seated beneath an ancient oak tree.
Her first words were from Psalm 118, "a domino factum est mirabile in oculis nostris" - "this is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes."
She was right, it was marvellous.
In fact, it was little short of a miracle that she had made it to that day alive.
Tudor royal politics were a bloody affair, especially for Tudor women.
She had been only two, after all, when her mother, Anne Boleyn, had gone to the scaffold, her sin, in Henry's mind at least, being her failure to produce a son.
It must have been a body possessed by others, by the devil.
An unclean piece of flesh, it had to be cut away.
So Elizabeth would never be free from suspicion.
Out of her dark Boleyn eyes, she watched herself being watched.
Inevitably, there were times when her guard was down.
She was barely a teenager when trouble first struck.
She was living with her guardian, Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's widow, when Parr's new husband, Thomas Seymour, started paying playful visits to her bedroom.
When Katherine Parr died, a rumour started circulating that Seymour had his sights set on marrying Elizabeth.
To even think of such a thing was treason.
Even worse, some wagging tongues said that Elizabeth was pregnant with his child.
It took all of Elizabeth's already extraordinary composure and self-confidence to persuade Lord Protector Somerset that she was innocent.
My Lord, there goeth rumours abroad which be greatly against my honour, which be these: That I am in the Tower and with child by my Lord Admiral.
My Lord, these are shameful slanders.
I most heartily desire your Lordship that I may come to the court and show myself there as I am.
Your assured friend to my little power, Elizabeth.
She was, remember, just 14, but there was already the fortitude, the clarity and the courage.
Just as well, because she would need these qualities five years later, when facing the most traumatic and dangerous crisis of her entire life.
When her Catholic half-sister, Mary, came to the throne, Elizabeth found herself in even deeper trouble.
She found herself in the Tower when a Protestant plot to get rid of Mary backfired.
Elizabeth managed to talk herself out of being charged with treason, but she remained under close surveillance.
Danger only turned to deliverance five years later when Queen Mary died childless.
So here she was, Elizabeth, under the oak, about to be the Protestant queen.
She had survived, just, but she must have been full of dark knowledge and experience about how difficult it was all going to be.
Her mother had been killed for producing just a daughter and a stillborn, and her sister Mary's womb produced only the tumour that killed her.
However dazzling Elizabeth looked, however clever she was, she must have known how rough the road was going to be for a ruler of the wrong sex.
The 25-year old Elizabeth came into an inheritance of high hopes and deep anxieties.
The celebrations at her coronation were carefully designed to show off the young queen as the paragon of virtue.
This charade of piety, though, was hardly enough to compensate for the misfortune of having another woman on the throne.
All the same, the sceptics must have been reassured by Elizabeth's precocious self-possession, the air of controlled energy she exuded in public, right from the start.
You might suppose that her first appearances at the council would have been an ordeal, but what the councillors saw was not some girlish ingenue, but someone who seemed full, it was said, of manly authority.
Elizabeth did all the things women in 16th-century England weren't supposed to do - she looked men in the eye and spoke out of turn.
She had been schooled to it by her tutor, Roger Ascombe.
Ascombe was not just another low-rent don.
He was public orator at Cambridge University, and it was his outlandish idea to teach the teenage girl a discipline most people thought unsuitable for a woman: The art of rhetoric, the art of public speech.
This was Elizabeth's first and would remain her strongest political weapon.
But Elizabeth brought something to the management of sovereignty that was entirely her own;
something, for that matter, which none of the princely conduct manuals spelled out, that statecraft was also stagecraft.
Her father and mother had both known this instinctively.
Elizabeth had the actress's gift in spadefuls.
She simply adored being adored.
Adoration, though, wasn't the same thing as allegiance.
For her most important advisor, her surrogate father, William Cecil, charisma was no substitute for the one thing which would secure the future of a Protestant England - an heir.
Cecil knew that the majority of the country was still Catholic either actively or passively.
He also knew how little it would take for the hard-earned gains of the Reformation to be undone.
Though the queen kept telling everyone it was none of their business, Cecil constantly reminded her that the realm needed her to have a husband.