All His Spies - The Secret World of Robert Cecil (Alford Stephen)(Pevná vazba)

''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.'' - The Times ''A compelling portrait of a pivotal, yet often neglected, figure in Elizabethan and Jacobean politics. Alford''s account of Robert Cecil and his spy network bristles with narrative energy and succinctly wise judgement.'' - Peter Marshall From the acclaimed author of The Watchers, the untold story of Robert Cecil - the ultimate Tudor spy-masterRobert 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
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