# The Favourite

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/mathew-lyons/the-favourite/9781849018098

![The Favourite](https://quivercdn.com/covers/constable/mathew-lyons/the-favourite_978-18-4901-809-8.jpg?v=2026-05-18%2008%3A19%3A33)

- Book: [The Favourite](https://www.bookquiver.com/mathew-lyons/the-favourite) ([The Favourite.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/mathew-lyons/the-favourite.md))
- Authors: [Mathew Lyons](https://www.bookquiver.com/mathew-lyons)
- Publisher: constable
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-18-4901-809-8
- Published: 2011-03-24
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: E-book

## Description

In The Favourite, Mathew Lyons strips away the myth - and the self-mythologising - to find Sir Walter Ralegh in the one role in which his contemporaries knew him best: the courtier who could win the attention - and the heart - of Elizabeth I, while also being the 'most hated man in England'. Using first-hand accounts, Lyons uncovers the maze of ambition, desire and amorality in which Ralegh lived before he rose to fame - a brutal Elizabethan world riven with crime and corruption and riddled with traitors and spies.