All His Spies

The Secret World of Robert Cecil

Stephen Alford

Double Rewards

$65

Hardback

In stock
Ready to ship

QTY:

English

Allen Lane
08 October 2024

Biography: historical, political & military; History; British & Irish history; Early modern history: c 1450 to c 1700; Espionage & secret services

Earn $10 Reward Vouchers

The untold story of Robert Cecil, the ultimate Tudor spy-master

Robert Cecil, statesman and spymaster, lived through an astonishingly threatening period in English history. Queen Elizabeth had no clear successor and enemies both external and internal threatened to destroy England as a Protestant state, most spectacularly with the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot.

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.

By: Stephen Alford
Imprint: Allen Lane
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 159mm, Spine: 39mm
Weight: 700g
ISBN: 9780241423479
ISBN 10: 0241423473
Pages: 448
Publication Date: 08 October 2024
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.

Reviews for All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil

Alford triumphs… in recreating the historical moment. By immersing himself in Cecil’s vast archive, he draws the reader deep into his working environment, capturing the closeness of his study and the chaos of the court… this is turn-of-century England as it really was – dangerous, gritty, on a knife edge -- Jessie Childs * The Times *