Merchant Adventurers and the Tudor City

London's Triumph

'Consistently illuminating ... Like all the best stories, it is about the timeless tides of power and influence ... trade deals can sometimes be sexy, thrilling and epic' Sinclair McKay, Spectator 
 
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 something extraordinary happened. 
 
Stephen Alford's evocative, original and fascinating new book uses the same skills that made his widely praised The Watchers so successful, bringing to life the network of merchants, visionaries, crooks and sailors who changed London forever. In a sudden explosion of energy English ships were suddenly found all over the world - trading with Russia and the Levant, exploring Virginia and the Arctic, and fanning out across the Indian Ocean. 
 
London's Triumph is above all about the people who made this possible - the families, the guild members, the money-men who were willing to risk huge sums and sometimes their own lives in pursuit of the rare, exotic and desirable. Their ambitions fuelled a new view of the world - initiating a long era of trade and empire, the consequences of which we still live with today.

Exceptionally rich and variegated...This might be a book for ministers to take on holiday in the summer.

Vivid and informative... somehow one can't help wondering whether there might be a lesson [here] for British commerce today.

The book is crammed with unexpected sidelights of 16th century London

A city contending with immigration, religious difference and the threat of violence... the unspoken comparisons that haunt this story are unavoidably poignant

Like all the best stories, it is about the timeless tides of power and influence... consistently illuminating and filled with pleasing resonance

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.

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 something extraordinary happened. 
 
Stephen Alford's evocative, original and fascinating new book brings to life the network of merchants, visionaries, crooks and sailors who changed London forever. 
 
London's Triumph is above all about the people who made this possible - the families, the guild members, the money-men who were willing to risk huge sums and sometimes their own lives in pursuit of the rare, exotic and desirable. Their ambitions fuelled a new view of the world - initiating a long era of trade and empire, the consequences of which we still live with today.

The Last Boy King

Edward VI (Penguin Monarchs)

Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, became king at the age of nine and died wholly unexpectedly at the age of fifteen. All around him loomed powerful men who hoped to use the child to further their own ends, but who were also playing a long game - assuming that Edward would long outlive them and become as commanding a figure as his father had been. 
 
Stephen Alford's wonderful book gives full play to the murky, sinister nature of Edward's reign, but is also a poignant account of a boy learning to rule, learning to enjoy his growing power and to come out of the shadows of the great aristocrats around him. England's last child monarch, Edward would have led his country in a quite different direction to the catastrophic one caused by his death.

Stephen Alford is the author of the bestselling The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I which was a Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph Book of the Year. He is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leeds.

A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I

The Watchers

The acclaimed and enthralling story of the dark side of Elizabethan rule, from Stephen Alford 
 
Elizabeth I's reign is known as a golden age, yet to much of Europe she was a 'Jezebel' and heretic who had to be destroyed. The Watchers is a thrilling portrayal of the secret state that sought to protect the Queen; a shadow world of spies, codebreakers, agent provocateurs and confidence-men who would stop at nothing to defend the realm. 
 
Reviews: 
 
'Forget Le Carré, Deighton and the rest - this is more enthralling than any modern spy fiction' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Absorbing and closely documented ... 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' Guardian 
 
'[Alford] has brought a dash of le Carré to the 16th century' The Times (Book of the Week) 
 
'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' Spectator 
 
About the author: 
 
Stephen Alford is the author of the acclaimed biography Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I and 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 in the University of Leeds.

Forget Le Carré, Deighton and the rest - this is more enthralling than any modern spy fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

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

Stephen Alford is the author of the acclaimed biography Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I and 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 in the University of Leeds.

Stephen Alford

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

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

One of the greatest biographies, a masterwork beautifully, intensely written and researched

The Secret World of Robert Cecil

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.

Stephen Alford

Praise for All His Spies

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 co ...

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

One of the greatest biographies, a masterwork beautifully, intensely written and researched

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 co ...

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

One of the greatest biographies, a masterwork beautifully, intensely written and researched

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 co ...

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

One of the greatest biographies, a masterwork beautifully, intensely written and researched

Books by Stephen Alford

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