This is a reassessment of the life and work of Philip Sidney, Elizabethan poet and an archetypal Renaissance man. Putting aside the idealized posthumous image of Sidney as polished courtier, romantic lover and Protestant soldier, the author has used original documents to construct the more individual but sometimes less pleasant image of a hot-tempered, difficult young man whose religious and political allegiance was often as much the product of opportunism as conviction. After a brilliant and privileged childhood and education, Sidney, uncomfortable at the court of Elizabeth I, shunned the life of a courtier and preferred to write. He died aged 31 in the Netherlands.