Sophie Shorland - All the Queen's Men

After ascending to the throne, the most eligible woman in Europe was flooded with proposals from princes, archdukes and kings.

But she kept them all waiting for five decades, playing each suitor off against the other for her own ends.

The historian, and author of The Lost Queen and Queen Catherine's Court, discusses how Elizabeth turned the competition for her hand into foreign policy - using courtship as diplomacy, flirtation as statecraft, and her perpetually single status as the key to England's survival in the tangled web of European politics.Talking to Deirdre Shields