The Elizabethan deliverance /

Harmless, high-colored panegyrics--for patriotic Britons and others sympathetically disposed. Bryant, a popular historian of long standing, realized, he relates, that he had written about every period in English history except ""the most important of all""--the first 30, unifying years of Elizabeth's reign. Taking his cues--quite openly--from ""the greatest of all Elizabethan historians,"" A. L. Rowse, and the highest-ranked biographer, John Ernest Neale, he has produced a narrative-tribute to Elizabeth's success in quelling religious strife, in winning over the hostile Scots, in playing off her foreign rivals against one another, in safeguarding the independence of the Netherlands, and (by backing Drake) in preserving the freedom of the seas. Bryant's effusiveness requires a certain tolerance: in two pages, we hear of ""this wise, temporizing and clement young ruler,"" ""this broad-minded, merciful young Queen"" (who ""set a rare example of moderation and good sense""), ""the Queen's humanity, breadth of vision and good sense."" But these are also the two pages on which he justly--and aptly--lauds Elizabeth's lenient Protestantism: ""her choice for a clear, simple, middle way, easy for moderate men to follow and, therefore, typically English."" And there is no serious quibble, on a popular level, with his judgments. The same may be said of his treatment of Drake (""this obscure English David"" out to slay ""the Spanish Goliath"" in one sentence, ""embarking on his one-man crusade against Spain"" in the next) and then the Armada, which occupies the book's second third; here, too, Bryant's ability to tell a good story comes to the fore. The last third, roughly speaking, concerns the planting of colonies and the cultural efflorescence (under the rubric ""Elizabethan Harvest"") and ""Shakespeare's London."" The very homeliness of Bryant's hyperbole disarms. ""No other city in Europe had a larger waterfront,"" he writes, ""and none so famous a bridge. There was only one, but with its gabled houses and shops . . . . "" So even the carper may become something of a convert--at least for the length of the book. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.