ELIZABETH Tudor was arguably the first truly people’s monarch.

From the moment she ascended the throne in 1558, she understood the need to win the hearts of her subjects, anticipating the modern concept of politics being the art of the possible by four centuries.

She inherited a land traumatised by war and religious persecution. But within a few years, Elizabeth had united the country, would famously see off foreign enemies, and make her beloved native turf a nation to be reckoned with.

Rebecca Vaughan’s immaculately crafted one-woman production gets right to the heart and soul of this remarkable individual, who in addition to bearing a royal burden, also had to wrestle with the more universal theme of what it meant to be a woman in the man’s world of the 16th century.

One by one, she answers her own questions, such as the pressing issue of whether or not she should marry. Yes, it might solve problems of succession, but what if her prince should become a tyrant of her people?

She therefore decides against wedlock, declaring with all the majesty at her disposal that she is already wed… to her beloved England.

Casting a historian’s as well as an actor’s eye down the centuries, Ms Vaughan wears the Tudor crown with a regal splendour, her voice ranging from girlish whisper to a stentorian boom that would have had the late Margaret Thatcher gasping in admiration.

At times, there are echoes of the celebrated Tilbury speech to her soldiers as the Armada draws near, when she famously declared that although having the body of a feeble woman, she had the heart of a king… and a king of England, too. Who would not follow a woman such as this?

This production lasts for 75 minutes without an interval and is testimony to the skill and endurance of Rebecca Vaughan. And like the subject of her piece, she never once wavers or falters… qualities that would no doubt have met with the approval of our Good Queen Bess herself.