Sir Walter Ralegh, the Fox of the title, dominates George Garrett's novel. The other characters are defined in terms of him. The book has been called "a fictional biography" of Ralegh; and, indeed, the author once intended to write a straight-forward nonfiction treatment of this enigmatic Elizabethan figure. Ralegh is the cause of other characters' sleepless nights, the subject of their memories and daydreams, their worries, perceptions, meditations. And his own thoughts and actions provide scenes of high drama and contemplative depth.

Ralegh is presented as a multifaceted, paradoxical figure whose characteristics and contradictions embody those of the Elizabethan period, still regarded as Britain's Golden Age.

However, Garrett is no starry-eyed romantic offering the reader sanitized nostalgic pleasures. True, Ralegh, like the stereotypical hero of historical romances, possesses a flair for drama and a thirst for adventure, as well as, in old age, a stoic dignity. Still, he...