Big Chief Elizabeth: How England's Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World

What Giles Milton singularly achieves in Big Chief Elizabeth is to bring our history to life. It’s accessible. It’s a movie blockbuster on the page.

In one full swoop, we are transported into Elizabethan England with all the sights, smells, toil, human emotion and passion that conjures the racy and exhilarating battle to settle the Americas. It’s a time of massive historical scope, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Frances Drake, the Spanish Armada, the virgin queen, the pestilenced and divided London. And although we are introduced to all, what Milton cleverly achieves is not once to let his narrative wander from the drive of the story – to establish the first British colony on the east coast of America.

There are many attempts. And these become the heart of the story as each is doomed to failure and abandonment by the homeland. It is these stories of heroism spoiled by ill judgement and native Indians too wily for their own good, which one will take away from this book.

Big Chief Elizabeth perfectly and profoundly captures the age. It has it all. So for fans of swashbuckling adventure, Treasure Island, human endeavour and history made riveting, please go buy this book. It has that essence of all good reads; you leave it wanting to explore and delve into a momentous time in our past. Who said history was boring!


A splendid romp through history!!   July 22, 2003
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Giles Milton brings history to life in an entertaining and fascinating manner.

Using letters and surviving documents of the period, the writer brings to life all the players in the story of England's attempts to colonise the New World. With the storytelling skill of a great novelist, this book will amuse, suprise and occasionally shock, as the courage, stupidity and brutality of the period unravel.

From Walter Raleigh to Pocahontas, this book has it all!


History made Interesting   March 6, 2003
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

If you want a lively read together with a bit of history then this is the book for you. It's got everything you could ask from an adventure novel and history is really brought to life. Milton has obviously done his research and there are hundreds of interesting anecdotes. A swash-buckling read.