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** 1/2 “The England of Elizabeth--Part I.”

By A.L. Rowse. Read by Jill Masters. Books on Tape--unabridged, 10 cassettes.

The Age of Elizabeth saw the beginnings of modern Britain: her emergence as an ocean-dominating world power, the early intimations of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of local government, the increasing stratification of society, along with the rise of the middle class, the flowering of the arts--most especially of the theater. Rowse, the controversial and often cantankerous historian, now in his 80s, was writing in the late 1940s, before events had shrunk the Empire and tamed the British lion, so that his ebullient, Tory vision is doubly nostalgic. But in its detailings of the rise and fall (and in some cases the survival) of great families, it is an engrossing pageant. With a reading by Masters that is crisply schoolmarmish and oddly impersonal, the recording is an indication of the breadth of material, fiction and nonfiction, available to be heard on audiocassette. Information: (714) 548-5525.