Customer Reviews

Elizabeth's Spymaster: Francis Walsingham and the Secret War That Saved England

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I have always been fascinated by the work of Sir Francis Walsingham so I bought this book in eager anticipation - and was terribly disappointed. It is basically a mix of generalist Elizabethan history and rather boring details of Sir Francis' expenses. The one operation about which we have lots of information is his campaign against Mary Queen of Scots and this is covered in some detail in the book but we are told no more than is revealed in a lot of other books about Mary, her imprisonment and trial. I was hoping to find out exactly how Sir Francis got started in the spying business and how he built up his spy ring. Although the author implies that, as a neighbour of Lord Burlegh's he was introduced into the world of Tudor politics and espionage, this is never explained fully.
Perhaps the irony is that Sir Francis was so good at what he did that we will never be able to find out how he did it!

I walked away with the feeling that the author intended to write a history of Queen Elizabeth's intelligence operations, but the publisher forced him to make it a biography. This book is an excellent history of internal and external politics of England during Elizabeth's reign. As a biography, it's only OK; not bad, but not great. As an adjunct to Shakespeare, it is brilliant.

I never really understood the events surrounding the detention of Mary Queen of Scots and the Spanish Armada until reading this. Now it all makes perfect sense. Vignettes about the implications of over-aggressive operations against religiously based insurgents are rife. Read with a broad veiw of current events, this book is very relevant.

As a bio, it's kind of flat. Walsingham was a character, and very good at what he did even if not appreciated by Elizabeth. He was a passionate intelligence professional, and ran some brilliant, if ethically dubious, operations. I think the material about Walsingham really got lost in the history.

As an adjunct to Shakespeare, this is excellent. This book reviews what would have been recent history and current events at the time Shakespeare began writing. The tone and references from Shakespeare make a lot more sense after wrapping myself around the life and times of Walsingham. The treachery and conspiracy culture that permeated Elizabeth's court is described in detail, and especially in "Measure For Measure" and "Two Gentlemen of Verona", the reader can better appreciate the complexity and risks of court life.

I really enjoyed and learned a lot from this book, and recommend it to any student of that period's history, intelligence history, or Shakespeare.

E.M. Van Court

Much of this book reads with the pace of a well-written novel.

But it suffers from Hutchinson's excessive use of quoted passages, a practice I regard as pernicious, one often used to pad the size of books.

Hutchinson's book suffers, too, from his own motives in writing it.

"By right, he should rank with Horatio Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, and even Sir Winston Churchill as one of the great patriotic defenders, against all-comers, of this island state, its monarchs, governments, beliefs and creeds."

I cannot agree. Here we have a man who said more than once that he could not be effective without torture, one who used the worst forms of torture extensively. He was also a man who plotted the downfall of great figures, including Mary Queen of Scots, with elaborate and devious schemes much in the style of what we would today term "entrapment."

I am more in agreement when Hutchinson writes of "the numbing fear of that sudden Gestapo-like knock at the door from Walsingham's questing pursuivants."

Walsingham was an extraordinarily intelligent man and very talented at what he did. Those who are familiar with Elizabeth I know she did not suffer fools gladly and had a group of advisors and servants of extraordinary ability, so Walsingham's skills are as we would expect.

But Walsingham was, like so many Puritans, a true fanatic, relentless in his pursuits, reminding the modern reader in many respects of dark figures in the Cold War or of the immortal and horrible, Inspector Javert.

Hutchinson's greatest fault is overstating the importance of Walsingham's contribution, crediting him, among other things, with England's success against Spain's Great Armada. This, it seems to me, is both a misreading of history and a dangerous error for people's understanding of parallel situations in today's world, the War on Terror having many similarities with the Elizabethan crusade against a re-establishment of Catholicism.

Elizabeth's period has been a favourite of mine for years, and I believe strongly that it is a serious misreading of history to say that Walsingham's intelligence was crucial to victory over the Great Armada. The Armada project was doomed from the start for the simple reason that Philip II of Spain did not have the resources to carry it off.

Philip was spending his treasure in every direction - fighting Turks in the Mediterranean, fighting a war in the Netherlands, running his inquisitions, and many other vast expenses - a treasure that was under constant attack by magnificent rascals like Sir Francis Drake, and he simply never had enough resources to succeed with the Armada. The Pope failed to deliver any significant resources, offering only talk and a fairly modest reward - modest in relation to the size of the project - payable upon the actual invasion of England.

The key to the invasion was landing the forces of the ferocious Duke of Alva from the Netherlands on the coast of England. Philip never had the beginning of enough ships for the secure passage of 30,000 heavily armed troops. The Armada's main naval force, launched from Spain, was to meet up with Alva's men on small boats launched from the coast of the Netherlands, an impossible task, especially given England's naval forces, daring tactics, and superior naval technology, both in fast and manoeuvrable ships and in more accurate cannon.

Indeed, first class intelligence - intelligence of the purely information-gathering and analysis kind, as opposed to the intelligence of dark operations - would have concluded that.

It is creepily interesting to read of Walsingham's career and exploits - interesting, that is, removed as we are by centuries of progress in human freedoms.

You will see here, in the events of more than four centuries ago, the kind of thinking and fear and paranoia we have experienced again in recent years under Bush's War on Terror, although I think it safe to say that the intensity of fear and hatred was greater in Walsingham's day.

Definitely worth reading, so long as readers are aware of its limits.

Lots of historical facts and dates. Not many stories about the individuals involved and how they carried out their spying and who they spied upon. It was interesting.

A little dry in style, but with good information, and a good bibliography. I enjoyed reading it.