All His Spies - The Secret World of Robert Cecil

Cecil stood at the heart of the Tudor and then Stuart state, a vital figure in managing the succession from Elizabeth I to James I & VI, warding off military and religious threats and steering the decisions of two very different but equally wilful and hard-to-manage monarchs. The promising son of Queen Elizabeth''s chief minister Lord Burghley, for Cecil there was no choice but politics, and he became supremely skilled in the arts of power, making many rivals and enemies.

All His Spies is a wonderfully engaging and original work of history. Many readers are familiar with the great events of this tumultuous time, but All His Spies shows how easily these dramas could have turned out very differently. Cecil''s sureness of purpose, his espionage network and good luck all conspired to keep England uninvaded and to create a new ''British'' monarchy which has endured to the present day.<>

About the author

Stephen Alford is the author of the highly acclaimed The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth and is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He taught for fifteen years at Cambridge University, where he was a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of History and a Fellow of King's College. He is now Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of Leeds.

Product details

• Authors: Stephen Alford, Alford Stephen
• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 04.07.2024
• EAN: 9780241423479
• ISBN: 978-0-241-42347-9
• No. of pages: 448
• Dimensions: 159 mm x 240 mm x 39 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; England, European History, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Intelligence & Espionage, HISTORY / Modern / 16th Century, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Stuart Era (1603-1714), Espionage & secret services, Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700, Espionage and secret services, Biography: historical, political and military, 1485–1603 (Tudor period), HISTORY / Europe / Renaissance, 1603–1649 (Jacobean and Early Stuart period), HISTORY / Military / Intelligence & Espionage, cold war; politics; spy; espionage; military