Stephen Alford

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 untold story of Robert Cecil, the ultimate Tudor spymaster. 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 story of the individuals whose ambition and recklessness transformed London, England and the world. Life in Europe was fundamentally changed in the 16th century by the astonishing discoveries of the New World and of direct sea routes to Asia. To start with, England was hardly involved, and London remained a gloomy, introverted medieval city. But as the century progressed,...