Elizabeth I and Her Circle, Susan Doran's book about Elizabeth I's personal and political relationships is an outstanding work of mature scholarship based on a lifetime's close engagement with the queen's reign. It encompasses Elizabeth's kinsfolk, three favored courtiers, the women of her court, and three leading privy councilors. This study's clear thematic structure and firmly selective approach distinguish it from previous accounts of the Elizabethan court and political scene. It draws on a wide range of primary sources, ranging from state papers and private letters to portraits and the records of gift exchanges, and it takes full account of the most recent research. Doran is a deft and enthralling narrator who skillfully avoids the pitfalls of possible repetition. She conveys her fresh and thought-provoking insights in elegantly clear and readable prose. Her conclusions are well weighed and judicious. In her assessments of characters and actions she shows a welcome charity, presenting difficult and complex situations from the point of view of each individual involved in them.

Doran underlines afresh the importance of Anne Boleyn's memory for the queen, and the extent to which her mother's kinsfolk and servants benefited from Elizabeth's favor. Among her paternal kinsfolk, Elizabeth almost certainly favored the claims of Mary Stewart or her son James to succeed her if she did not bear children of her own. The two chapters here devoted to the Stewarts highlight the elements of continuity in Elizabeth's policy towards them. Her record of persistent efforts to achieve a just and constructive resolution of the problem of Mary Stewart remains impressive. Unconvinced of the validity of her father's provisions for the succession, Elizabeth did everything she could to prevent her Suffolk cousins and their descendants from establishing themselves as potential successors. Her severity towards Katherine Grey was probably due to her wish to reassure Mary Stewart.

Six courtiers and councilors receive admirably just, balanced, and on the whole convincing assessments. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, appears as a loyal and able servant with genuine convictions rather than the devious villain and opportunist of Catholic propaganda. He continued to hope for marriage with the queen for several years after Elizabeth had decided against it. He coped well with his disappointment and continued to give her emotional comfort and support. He failed badly in the Netherlands, but he served there against what Doran judges impossible odds. Sir Christopher Hatton, never the Catholic that many believed him to be, was of all Elizabeth's lay servants the one best attuned to her conservative ecclesiastical priorities. He was not only an accomplished courtier but also an eloquent orator and conscientious lord chancellor. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was a gifted man of vision and a zealous, brave, and energetic (albeit largely unsuccessful) soldier. His militant bellicosity was however fundamentally at odds with the queen's enduring desire for an honorable peace. His flagrant disobedience in Ireland eventually exhausted Elizabeth's remarkable patience, and his paranoid credulity then led him into the treason that destroyed him.

The length of William Cecil, Lord Burghley's service as the crown's principal adviser, unmatched in English history, was largely justified by his exceptional knowledge, sure memory, grasp of detail, capacity for work, and steadiness of temperament, even though he proved unenterprising and inefficient as principal manager of the crown's revenues. He thought that Elizabeth was too lenient towards Mary Stewart and too harsh towards advocates of further Protestant reform, and he sometimes tried to manipulate her. There was, however, no fundamental difference between their conceptions of monarchy. Burghley did not question the queen's prerogative, and Doran discreetly warns against linking him with the implicitly “republican” ideas that have figured in some recent discussion of the reign. Sir Francis Walsingham largely shared Burghley's views on religion and international affairs, though he disapproved even more strongly of what he regarded as Elizabeth's passivity in face of external and domestic threats, believed that England's security was intimately bound up with the international Protestant cause, and consistently pressed for help to be given to the Netherlands provinces in rebellion against Philip II. Elizabeth might have found Walsingham's pessimism unpalatable, but he was no rigid Puritan, and his extensive personal knowledge of the Continent, together with his efficiency in gathering intelligence, made him a most useful principal secretary. In Doran's opinion, Elizabeth's collaboration with Walsingham illustrates particularly well the readiness to employ councilors who were not yes-men that was one of the great strengths of her rule.

The inclusion in her court and council of men of very different views and sympathies was not part of a strategy of divide and rule. Historians no longer find Sir Robert Naunton's notorious opinion that Elizabeth ruled much by faction and parties useful or perceptive. In 1599 one of Essex's supporters claimed that Sir Robert Cecil fed on faction. Doran shows that the charge was baseless and gives due weight to Cecil's efforts to conciliate Essex. Throughout the reign, men worked together in the queen's service despite their competition for her favor. Occasionally that competition could nevertheless cause intense personal jealousy. Doran gives several examples of men who resented the emergence of new favorites, or what appeared to them the undue concentration of power and favor. This was the complaint of the Cecils' enemies in the 1590s, though Doran firmly endorses Burghley's rebuttal of the charge.

As is well known, members of Elizabeth's circle sometimes deceived or sought to manipulate her; some of them blatantly disobeyed her. Deceit and disobedience enraged her, and those responsible often suffered stinging rebukes and the withdrawal of favor, whether they were court women who married secretly or without her permission, or her captains on campaign. Forgiveness commonly followed sooner or later: Elizabeth was most reluctant to part with servants in whom she had placed her trust. She chose them well, but as Doran shows, she was never in thrall to any of them.