David Starkey presents this account of Elizabeth I's reign, built from newly filmed re-creations, portraits and artifacts of the period, and passages read from Elizabethan records. The film opens on a country under threat from Spain and from Catholic plots at home, then follows how Elizabeth built the Royal Navy into a force capable of defeating the Spanish Armada. Starkey uses that victory as the hinge of the film, showing how it secured her throne and cleared space for the cultural flowering that produced William Shakespeare. Reenactments put faces to the court intrigue and succession anxiety that ran under the public triumphs, while Starkey's narration works through the private costs of a monarch who never married and staked her legitimacy on unwavering devotion to her subjects. The film moves between grand set pieces, coronation, naval battle, courtly ceremony, and the quieter evidence of letters and objects, building a portrait of a ruler whose personal sacrifices became the price of the kingdom's stability.