Messy handwriting reveals mystery translator: Queen Elizabeth I

Researcher at Lambeth Palace follows ‘usefully messy’ fragment of Roman history to its royal source

The appalling handwriting gave the game away. An academic has identified the anonymous 16th-century author of a translation of Tacitus: Queen Elizabeth I.

Kept in Lambeth Palace’s library since the 17th century, the manuscript was identified by John-Mark Philo, an honorary fellow in English studies at the University of East Anglia, while he was researching manuscript translations of the Roman historian.