MixedThe SpectatorThe exceptional Bess has attracted many biographers ... Kate Hubbard’s new book differs from these by examining Bess’s life as a ‘builder within the context of the Elizabethan building world’. It is, consequently, part biography and part building history ... It is in here that we can still see Bess’s wit, ambition, creativity and vast wealth ... Hubbard seems at times decidedly unsympathetic to Bess ... Kate Hubbard has written a work of considerable scholarship, but it lacks an empathetic heart for its subject.
