Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88486 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 428 pages

Frank McLynn, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
'Robert Hutchinson's lucid and learned volume gives us a vivid portrait of Walsingham... an excellent book.'

Review
'An accessible, authoritative account of Francis Walsingham's life and work. Written with a sense of the dramatic... The author is very good at evoking the atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia during Elizabeth's reign and seems to relish describing the methods of torture at Walsingham's disposal and the brutality of the age. It makes Elizabethan statecraft immediate and entertaining.' (THE BOOK MAGAZINE )

'Robert Hutchinson's lucid and learned volume gives us a vivid portrait of Walsingham... an excellent book.' (Frank McLynn INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY )

'Walsingham emerges from these pages as a hero of epic stature.' (DAILY TELEGRAPH )

'compelling' (LITERARY REVIEW )

'Hutchinson neatly combines his expert knowledge with an impressive narrative suspense and mordant sense of humour... A darkly informative read.' (WATERSTONE'S BOOKS QUARTERLY )

'The story told here is intense and compelling.' (BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE )

'Impeccably researched... the author has constructed what almost amounts to a thriller in this gripping narrative.' (GOOD BOOK GUIDE )

'full of stimulating detail... vivid glimpses of the world of Elizabethan espionage' (Simon Callow THE GUARDIAN )

'superb research' (THE TABLET )

'by shining a light into the murky world he inhabited , the author grants [Walsingham] his proper place in English history.' (THIS ENGLAND )

'the strength of this book lies in its combination of brilliant original research with a compelling narrative.' (HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW )

LITERARY REVIEW
'compelling'

Customer Reviews

THE ELIZABETHAN EQUIVALENT OF MI5?
This fascinating volume is a well written account of the intriguing life of Francis Walshingham - a brilliant man, who we now believe to be one of the first " spy masters" in our history. During his remarkable career, he was involved in one form or another in all of the above activities and perhaps many more too. With a network of loyal informers, he was successful in infiltrating many of these Catholic families and by also placing his men inside the Vatican itself and the Spanish Armada too, was able to foil several assassination attempts on the Queen's life.
There is no doubt, that the author has carried out a vast amount of original and painstaking research . His dramatic text is supported with several beautiful full colour plates and excellent period engravings. The detailed bibliography and notes in the appendix will, I feel sure, be a valuable aid to further research.
This excellent publication will surprise even the more knowledgeable of historians, it will be invaluable for those researching this particular period of history and is a must read for anyone interested in intelligence matters. Family and local history researchers may uncover one or two surprises between the pages.

A MUST READ BOOK.
First - I wish I had the wit, skill and talent to have written this superb 'page turner', not a term you normaly use for a historical publication, but this is truly a winner, well to me anyway.

Its a good read, well written, great subject, should be made into a film.

The product of a good writer who knows how to entertain and inform, not a boring historical text book by some historical 'expert' who feels you should read without comment and agree, but a book that talks to you as a friend and keeps you needing to read more.

Return to cliché
This is the third recent book to scrutinise the work of the Elizabethan diplomat, politician and spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. The best of the trio is that by Alan Haynes published in 2004 - a superbly sinewy and corrective study. His Walsingham was clearly a cultured intellectual of huge resolve, despite his severe bouts of ill-health. His avowed intention was to save England and its last Tudor queen from the fierce hostility of Spain, and the enmity of France, a country ravaged by religious wars. The invisible power of Walsingham through his spies seemed to reach into every country in Europe. Hutchinson provides the serious student with a useful listing of English archival material from which the many stories can be told, but he makes no mention either of Haynes's first-rate book. If he failed to read it he was foolish; if he read it and deliberately failed to note it then he is discourteous.

Over many years Walsingham was briskly characterised as a stern Puritan bigot. Haynes resisted this cliché and found evidence of a loving family man with secure taste in books, music and painting. He had too, a sharp interest in drama as a propaganda tool for the government. Hutchinson, perhaps because of his book's subtitle, is forced back to the older drabber figure locked into a secret struggle with catholicism. So the reader solely interested in this aspect of Mr. Secretary's career might choose to buy Hutchinson's book for its focus. However, for breadth and a concentrated wealth of information, written by an expert on the Elizabethan secret services, the essential book at a similar price is that by Alan Haynes.