In The Watchers, Cambridge historian Stephen Alford presents the Elizabethan period as a dark and uncertain time in England's history. With no successor to Elizabeth and with the forces of Catholicism arrayed against her, the government's security balanced on the edge of a knife.
Against the backdrop of such uncertainty--where the death of the queen would lead to the government's collapse and leave the nation vulnerable to foreign invasion--a sophisticated system of espionage developed: infiltration, double agents, forgery and cryptography. Agents in Elizabeth's service ranged across Europe to spy on dissident English Catholics in Paris and Rome--and closer to home in Scotland.
Alford populates this engaging study of Elizabethan espionage with a cast of colorful characters and exposes the dark underbelly of a period that is often better known for Shakespeare and the triumph against the Spanish Armada. Secret correspondence, infiltration into the ranks of exile English Catholics in Rome and the betrayal of double agents are some of the thrilling elements that comprise this little-known tale.
Alford draws the obvious parallel between the unscrupulous, brutal methods of the Elizabethan era and the contemporary dilemmas of Homeland Security. He suggests that at times, the fear of danger was greater than the danger itself--yet the end was thought to justify the means. Alford argues that the motives of the queen's counciller Francis Walsingham, when England was embattled on all sides, were clearly in the state's best interests. But his actions were nonetheless questionable, with consequences for the monarchy in centuries to come. --Ilana Teitelbaum, book reviewer at the Huffington Post