Fire Over England is a 1937 London Film Productions film drama, notable for providing the first pairing of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. It was directed by William K. Howard and written by Clemence Dane from the novel Fire Over England by A. E. W. Mason. Leigh's performance in the movie helped to convince David O. Selznick to cast her as Scarlett O'Hara in his production of Gone with the Wind. The film is a historical drama set during the reign of Elizabeth I (Flora Robson), focusing on the English defeat of the Spanish Armada, hence the title. In 1588, relations between Spain and England are at the breaking point. With the support of Queen Elizabeth I, English sea raiders such as Sir Francis Drake regularly capture Spanish merchantmen bringing gold from the New World. Elizabeth's chief advisors are the lord treasurer, Lord Burleigh (Morton Selten), and her longtime admirer, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (Leslie Banks). Burleigh's beautiful but featherbrained granddaughter Cynthia (Vivien Leigh) is one of Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting, and the aging queen is plagued with jealousy of the girl's attractiveness and vitality.