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Review
Forget Le Carré, Deighton and the rest - this is more enthralling than any modern spy fiction -- Rupert Christiansen ― Daily Telegraph
Absorbing and closely documented ... his accounts of the unmasking of the Throckmorton and Babington plots are full and gripping, and he throws much light on the secret agents who exposed these and similar conspiracies ... Alford vividly evokes this murky world of codes, ciphers, invisible ink, intercepted letters, aliases, disguises, forgeries and instructions to burn after reading ... flowing narrative [and] crisp judments ... engrossing -- Keith Thomas ― Guardian
Alford brings these men, their worlds and the unfortunate victims of their espionage vividly out of the shadows. Their interlocking biographies and adventures combine to produce a portrait of a mid-to-late Elizabethan England that was ruled by Walsingham's maxim: "There is less danger in fearing too much than too little" ... [Alford] has brought a dash of le Carré to the 16th century -- Dan Jones ― Times Book of the Week
Alford paints a vivid and staggeringly well-researched portrait of the sinister side of Elizabethan England ... This is a spectacular book. It sheds new light on plots that most historians have ceased to explore and brings less famous conspiracies to the attention of the general reading public ― Herald
Fascinating ... If you want to know the inside story of this struggle, the dark heart of calculation and the fight for survival, then this is the book to read. I know no better -- Alan Judd ― Spectator
An enthralling account of the murky shadow-world of Elizabethan espionage ... The fascination of Alford's book ... lies in its focus on the worker bees in the intelligence hive. He has delved deep into encrypted archives to discover the lengths to which Elizabethan Englishmen were prepared to go to destroy their queen, or to defend her - and one of the surprises of a story full of dizzying twists is quite how many of them ended up attempting to do both ... In a bravura piece of counterfactual storytelling, Alford describes the moment in an imagined 1586 when one of the many plots to assassinate Elizabeth finally succeeded ... The heart of the Tudor state, as Alford compellingly shows, is entirely human in its darkness -- Helen Castor ― Times Higher Education
The Watchers ... provides a genuine - and compelling - reappraisal of one of the most studied periods in English history: the reign of Elizabeth I. In exploring the world (or underworld) of Elizabethan espionage, Alford takes us on a darker, more disturbing and arguably more fascinating journey through the Elizabethan era than any other historian of the period ... [He] begins by taking the reader through a terrifyingly dramatic account of an assassination attempt in 1586, which leaves Queen Elizabeth mortally wounded ... It is an imaginary, but startlingly real scenario ... By telling it here, Alford sets the scene perfectly for the rest of the narrative, putting the reader in the mindset of the Virgin Queen's paranoid ministers ... a fascinating cast of characters ... engaging and perfectly pitched narrative ... Alford weaves together the bewilderingly complex threads of plots and counterplots so skilfully that as a reader you are never left floundering -- Tracy Borman ― BBC History Magazine
Alford ... has delved deeply into 16th-century archives to unearth a history of the dark underside to the Elizabethan golden age - a page-turning tale of assassination plots, torture, and espionage ― Publishers Weekly
An intimate and revealing exploration of the men who did the Elizabethan security state's dirty work. Lifting the lid on the Protestant-Catholic 'cold war' of the late sixteenth century, Stephen Alford sifts the sources with a forensic eye, bringing to life the motley collection of self-interested chancers and drifters, religious and political zealots who watched each other in the streets of London, Paris and Rome. Leading us into the dark corners, safe houses and interrogation chambers of this twilight world, The Watchers paints a fascinating picture of the vast and nebulous threat facing Elizabethan England - and its determination to deal with that threat by any means necessary -- Thomas Penn, author of WINTER KING
Detailed and diligently researched ― Sunday Times
[A] deep and convincing new study of the Elizabethan security services ... Previous attempts to understand the world of Tudor espionage ... have been hampered by the intractability of the source materials ... So it is greatly to the author's credit that he tells us much that is new about the diverse, and frankly bizarre, personalities who protected Elizabeth from an assassin's bullet and her realm from invasion ... Alford's mastery of the Elizabethan state papers delivers a detailed, believable and often compelling account of the strategies deployed by the state ... Alford is even-handed in his approach, not flinching from the grisly details of state-sponsored torture and execution, but also trying to see the situation from the government's point of view -- John Cooper ― Literary Review
Stephen Alford has written a gripping account of these cruel and dramatic events, proving that the survival of Protestant England was purchased at a very high price indeed ― Sunday Express
Absorbing and closely documented ... his accounts of the unmasking of the Throckmorton and Babington plots are full and gripping, and he throws much light on the secret agents who exposed these and similar conspiracies ... Alford vividly evokes this murky world of codes, ciphers, invisible ink, intercepted letters, aliases, disguises, forgeries and instructions to burn after reading ... flowing narrative [and] crisp judments ... engrossing -- Keith Thomas ― Guardian
Alford brings these men, their worlds and the unfortunate victims of their espionage vividly out of the shadows. Their interlocking biographies and adventures combine to produce a portrait of a mid-to-late Elizabethan England that was ruled by Walsingham's maxim: "There is less danger in fearing too much than too little" ... [Alford] has brought a dash of le Carré to the 16th century -- Dan Jones ― Times Book of the Week
Alford paints a vivid and staggeringly well-researched portrait of the sinister side of Elizabethan England ... This is a spectacular book. It sheds new light on plots that most historians have ceased to explore and brings less famous conspiracies to the attention of the general reading public ― Herald
Fascinating ... If you want to know the inside story of this struggle, the dark heart of calculation and the fight for survival, then this is the book to read. I know no better -- Alan Judd ― Spectator
An enthralling account of the murky shadow-world of Elizabethan espionage ... The fascination of Alford's book ... lies in its focus on the worker bees in the intelligence hive. He has delved deep into encrypted archives to discover the lengths to which Elizabethan Englishmen were prepared to go to destroy their queen, or to defend her - and one of the surprises of a story full of dizzying twists is quite how many of them ended up attempting to do both ... In a bravura piece of counterfactual storytelling, Alford describes the moment in an imagined 1586 when one of the many plots to assassinate Elizabeth finally succeeded ... The heart of the Tudor state, as Alford compellingly shows, is entirely human in its darkness -- Helen Castor ― Times Higher Education
The Watchers ... provides a genuine - and compelling - reappraisal of one of the most studied periods in English history: the reign of Elizabeth I. In exploring the world (or underworld) of Elizabethan espionage, Alford takes us on a darker, more disturbing and arguably more fascinating journey through the Elizabethan era than any other historian of the period ... [He] begins by taking the reader through a terrifyingly dramatic account of an assassination attempt in 1586, which leaves Queen Elizabeth mortally wounded ... It is an imaginary, but startlingly real scenario ... By telling it here, Alford sets the scene perfectly for the rest of the narrative, putting the reader in the mindset of the Virgin Queen's paranoid ministers ... a fascinating cast of characters ... engaging and perfectly pitched narrative ... Alford weaves together the bewilderingly complex threads of plots and counterplots so skilfully that as a reader you are never left floundering -- Tracy Borman ― BBC History Magazine
Alford ... has delved deeply into 16th-century archives to unearth a history of the dark underside to the Elizabethan golden age - a page-turning tale of assassination plots, torture, and espionage ― Publishers Weekly
An intimate and revealing exploration of the men who did the Elizabethan security state's dirty work. Lifting the lid on the Protestant-Catholic 'cold war' of the late sixteenth century, Stephen Alford sifts the sources with a forensic eye, bringing to life the motley collection of self-interested chancers and drifters, religious and political zealots who watched each other in the streets of London, Paris and Rome. Leading us into the dark corners, safe houses and interrogation chambers of this twilight world, The Watchers paints a fascinating picture of the vast and nebulous threat facing Elizabethan England - and its determination to deal with that threat by any means necessary -- Thomas Penn, author of WINTER KING
Detailed and diligently researched ― Sunday Times
[A] deep and convincing new study of the Elizabethan security services ... Previous attempts to understand the world of Tudor espionage ... have been hampered by the intractability of the source materials ... So it is greatly to the author's credit that he tells us much that is new about the diverse, and frankly bizarre, personalities who protected Elizabeth from an assassin's bullet and her realm from invasion ... Alford's mastery of the Elizabethan state papers delivers a detailed, believable and often compelling account of the strategies deployed by the state ... Alford is even-handed in his approach, not flinching from the grisly details of state-sponsored torture and execution, but also trying to see the situation from the government's point of view -- John Cooper ― Literary Review
Stephen Alford has written a gripping account of these cruel and dramatic events, proving that the survival of Protestant England was purchased at a very high price indeed ― Sunday Express
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.
Review:
4.6 out of 5
92.00% of customers are satisfied
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
There is a quote from Elizabeth I that she had lived her life in small rooms and this fascinating book really shows why. What a fearful life she had really, with her upbringing as a bastardised daughter of an executed mother, disinherited by her brother, put in the tower by her sister, to ascend the throne a miracle which you would have thought would be happy ever after, but no! Although I knew of the plots and spying around Elizabeth the sheer scale of it throughout her reign puts a completely different perspective of the Faerie Queen's life as monarch.She was fortunate in the men who surrounded her, many well known like Burleigh and Walsingham but this book sheds light on a whole cast; the skullduggery , treachery, bravery and foolhardiness surround the tenuous hold the Queen and country had from being swallowed up by catholic plots and power grabs. An opaque web covers the reign with at its heart Mary the Scottish queen whose pampered upbringing was in stark contrast to Elizabeth's.This book is a great read, well researched but with the excitement of a true page turner, full of characters which brings the era to life and for me at least gives an even greater appreciation and empathy for Elizabeth and the sadness of her life. it is a shame that in the endless films they make about Elizabeth there is not one that concentrates more on the sheer fearfulness of the time, the endless plots and assassination attempts, the work of the 'Watchers' rather than the usual emphasis and meetings with Mary that never actually happened. This is a story that is much more interesting and it is the truth.
4.0 out of 5 stars Absence of Continental Perspective
This is an excellent study of the struggle to secure the Elizabethan religious settlement and of the motivations and characters of the main participants on both sides of the divide. Meticulous research. However, there is a lack of appreciation of what was going on in Europe at the time, the sheer brutality of the actions against protestant communities in Spain, France and the Spanish Netherlands which explains the ruthlessness of Elizabeth's government in their determination to prevent such things occurring in England. It is also worthy of comment that there was no St Bartholomew's Eve massacre in
5.0 out of 5 stars 'Ye Watchers and ye Holy Ones'
So begins a well-known hymn and it might well have been referring to the Elizabethan England of spies, counter-spies, encryptions, double-dealing and paranoia that Stephen Alford's book eloquently and dramatically re-creates.As I write, leaders of the Anglican Communion are secretly meeting to choose their next preferred leader, who must be approved both by the Queen and the Prime Minister. The choice of the next Archbishop of Canterbury is fraught with difficulties: who, if anyone, can reconcile the differences that threaten to destabilise and perhaps split the Anglican Communion? Meanwhile, in The Vatican, the Pope's butler is on trial for leaking private papers which, he claims, reveal the corruption and intrigue at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church, a church now apparently trying to minimise the public 'outfall' of this episode, at the same time as it is riven with rumours and evidence of past abuses of those in its care.Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are at the heart of historical intrigue in the Elizabethan state. Henry VIII made the dramatic break from Rome, desperate to find valid theological arguments to support his case and cause; protestant reforms continued during the short reign of the young Edward VI; Mary I ('Bloody Mary' ) reversed the religious thrust, persecuting and killing Protestants in her crusade to return England to Rome. Who knows how different our history might have been had her reign not been abruptly brought to an end by her death in 1558? Elizabeth and her officers then began the counter-attack, persecuting Catholics and hounding them from the country, where some plotted their revenge and the overthrow of the Queen.Both within England and on continental Europe, those who challenged Elizabeth's right to govern and to be the proclaimed rightful head of the Church of England were assiduously tracked down, monitored and, in many cases, executed. To make this possible there existed a complex network of spies and counter-spies, passing on information, intercepting letters, encrypting their writing, espousing their cause.At the centre of the web sit, spider-like, Walsingham, Burghley, Cecil and Essex, caught up in a frenzy of anxiety for the safety of the Queen and her realm, undermining plots, collecting intelligence, screening agents.This is a book of profound scholarship that reads like a modern spy novel. The detail is engrossing, the narrative compelling. Even if you think you're not really interested in historical writing, you may be surprised by your response to this book. There are no annoying footnotes but an extraordinarily comprehensive chapter-by-chapter list of sources and a lengthy bibliography.What did it do for me? It gripped me from page 1 to the end. I am not a historian but I have an amateur's interest in how and why this country has evolved as it has. I am also struck by the modern parallels that the reader can draw (Alford only hints at this, but it's not difficult to see). I am saddened that the kind of religious divisions and fanaticism that informed the ages of Mary and Elizabeth still impact in profound ways on our world today.When I skim through the references at the end of the book I am reminded how much research is needed to write a book such as this. I also wonder at the wealth of information of our island's history that lies in the National Archives at Kew and in other archives.It's a tribute to the author that, on finishing the book, I immediately wanted to read other books on the period: Stephen Alford's own book on Burghley; Thomas Penn's 'The Winter King' and John Cooper's 'The Queen's Agent'.Highly recommended.
3.0 out of 5 stars OK - BUT
This story is very interesting. I had not been aware of the extent of the espionage master-minded by Walsingham and Burghley. To that extent, it is well told.However, the author seems to be unaware that those who are interested enough to read his book will be intelligent enough to follow a character from one chapter to another. Too often he introduces someone, describes his role and importance - then a couple of chapters further on, re-introduces the same person as though we had never heard of him!He also does what is - I fear - a common thing in the days of "cut and paste". He makes a point in one place and then exactly the same point in IDENTICAL terms further on. Maddening.There were times when I found the narrative "ponderous", as another reviewer said - but the basic bones of the story still gripped me.Occasionally, I felt that the book consisted of a series of separate essays which the author had done for his MA - and then stitched together to make a book.
5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating read.
A fascinating read that increased my knowledge of Elizabeth l's spymasters, and her vendetta against Mary Queen of Scots. It provides a refreshingly new perspective on the period, spurred on by paranoia and religious zeal. However, I wasn't convinced by Anthony Babington's alleged duplicity.
Elizabethan Spies in the Shadows
We often perceive Elizabethan England with 20/20 hindsight as an inevitable, civilised progress through leisurely and triumphant English success. But the subjects of the Virgin Queen did not have our knowledge that their monarch would enjoy a smooth transition as an Anglican ruler.Elizabethan England was awash with espionage due to conflicts between Anglicans (or Reformers, as they were then called) and Roman Catholics. Queen Elizabeth was gifted with several dedicated courtiers who laboured hard and long to ensure that she survived numerous attempts to assassinate her. Lord Burleigh and Sir Francis Walsingham both employed many shady spies to ferret out plots and protect Gloriana.Stephen Alford provides us with an in-depth examination of the colourful characters who fought ruthlessly to ensure that Mary, Queen of Scots would not ascend the English throne.Alford's research is impeccable and the details of espionage are chilling, engaging, lurid and moving. A worthy read for anyone who enjoys the details of Tudor England.
Great read - and not just for history buffs
Sent this book by the publishers, I really looked forward to reading what’s ostensibly a behind the scenes account of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign but from the point of view of the “watchers”: that is, reporters, listeners, spies – the men whose speciality was espionage. Elizabethan times, it turns out, are notorious for their extensive use of spies and networks, all of which were established to protect England and ensure the queen’s successful reign. As Alford writes in the introduction, while Elizabeth and her council worked hard to maintain “clever and persuasive projections of political stability, empire, self-confidence and national myth” there was, in fact, “a darker story… set against a Europe divided and oppressed by religious conflict, civil war and the ambitions of kings and princes.”Taking the crown after her half-sister “Bloody Mary” tried to purge the Protestant stain, and trying to stabilise an England divided by religious schism and rapidly changing succession, Elizabeth’s job was not easy. Declaring England as Protestant, but claiming that Catholicism would be tolerated, Elizabeth nonetheless was acutely aware of how precarious her position as ruler and religious head of a reeling nation was. Plots to declare her rule invalid, assassination attempts, never mind trying to overthrow Elizabeth and place Mary Queen of Scots on the throne abounded. Then there was the job of trying to find Elizabeth a suitable husband, all of which meant that though the kingdom flourished in terms of exploration, the humanities and arts, there was also a seething underbelly that threatened to erupt and destroy everything at any time. The greatest threat was that of the Catholics who, discontent with Elizabeth’s heretical leadership and perceiving it as ungodly, sought to rid themselves of Henry VIII’s daughter and restore the “true religion”. Working from within their homeland, their overseas networks were extensive, travelling across Europe and involving some of the most powerful people abroad as well.The stage is thus set for espionage, betrayal, treason, propaganda, secrets, torture, faith, martyrdom and lies all of which Sir Francis Walsingham and his successors sought to control.Carefully researched and very well-written, this book is an eye-opener that also makes the mind boggle. The lengths to which various individuals would go to inveigle themselves into (Catholic) families or communities in order to uncover plots and treasons were phenomenal. Conspirators were discovered frequently, many from noble families. The Throckmorton plot was one of the most famous and this is covered in detail throughout the book. Fascinating in its complexity and the degree of commitment and sacrifice believers were ready to make, uncovering it was to prove an even greater triumph.The book goes onto explore the stories, derring-do, successes and failures of many spies and traitors, how far they were willing to go (disguise, denying their identities for long periods, sacrificing family and a “normal” life for little reward) and from these we also learn how disposed Walsingham and his men were to use torture to uncover secrets and plots and how brutal their interrogation methods were. Some of the spies, or intelligencers, were gentleman and even poets, others were criminals, but many were chameleons, able to shift, camouflage themselves and change with subtlety. There was William Parry, Thomas Phelippes, Gilbery Gifford, Chrales Sledd, Sir Robert Cecil, Burghley, simply to name a few (forgive my memory) - names both known and unknown to history buffs. Perhaps, for those names less familiar, it’s testimony to how well they performed their roles – they disappeared not simply into the woodwork, but became lost in the pages of history and time until Alford recovers them. Uncovering the plots and deeds of desperate men, these watchers brought many to trial and death and, in doing so, ensured Elizabeth’s long reign.Utilising surviving records, Alford has done an amazing job and recreated in detail a tumultuous but fascinating period. Almost akin to a Renaissance version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I found this book fascinating, challenging (to keep track of the different names and roles), but also a wonderful insight into what occurs behind the doors, under the tables and in the shadows and whispers of a colourful and deceptively confidant queen’s reign. Like an ice-berg, it was the seven-eights we didn’t see that ensured the topmost part remained afloat. Alford has given us access to that which we don’t normally witness and exposed the intricacy and deadly seriousness of spying in Elizabethan times.A great read for history buffs, writers, anyone who loves tales of espionage and appreciates solid research delivered in an entertaining and engaging manner.
A good book.
A well researched and engaging account of the realities underlying Elizabethan politics. That so much is documented and known about these activities reflects the efficiency of the spy masters and the government they served. I recommend this book to those who seek to touch the personalities behind historical events.
How Elizabethan England survived the 16th century
This book was a revelation for me of the extraordinary pressure put on the English crown by the Roman Catholic princes, kings and Popes during the entirety of Elizabeth 1st reign. Highly recommended
Five Stars
Really interesting details of 16th c espionage.
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The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I
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Product origin: United Kingdom
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