Chin up! How at 18 Queen Elizabeth I was dogged by anxiety, Richard Burton was a school dropout and Geoffrey Chaucer had been lucky to survive the Black Death, writes historian ALICE LOXTON on A-level

For millions of teenagers around the country, their immediate futures are being decided today. Queen Elizabeth I - Dogged by anxiety Perhaps it's no surprise 18-year-old Elizabeth - though brilliantly clever - was dogged by anxiety, and constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown, writes ALICE LOXTON What would a modern therapist make of eighteen-year-old Elizabeth I? Richard Burton - school dropout Richard Burton was born on November 10, 1925 in the small front bedroom of a terraced house in Pontrhydyfen, a village in South Wales. Dame Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler, her third husband, celebrate United Colors of Benetton's new capsule collection designed by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac on March 31, 2022 Geoffrey Chaucer - sartorial trailblazer and survivor of the Black Death It must have been a relief for Geoffrey Chaucer to have reached his eighteenth birthday. Born the son of a London vintner, at around 7 years old he endured the horrors of the Black Death, a plague which attacked 'the whole of England so violently that scarcely one in ten of either sex was left alive' It was a dramatic Gap Year: whilst the English army laid siege, Geoffrey was taken prisoner by the French, only escaping by the skin of his teeth.