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Bezig met laden... Under the Molehill: An Elizabethan Spy Story (2001)door John Bossy
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. In the 1580's, Walsingham's spy operations somehow gained access to the correspondence of the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, Seigneur de Mauvissière. In this book and its earlier companion to Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair, Bossy has attempted to determine the identities of the agents involved. I liked this book much better than the earlier one. It is still a very scholarly work, with copies of original documents appended, but the writing is much clearer and livelier. In addition, Bossy has translated foreign language quotes. I am also more convinced of his conclusions. Bossy seems to really sympathize with Michel de Castelnau, Seigneur de Mauvissière, who seems very likable and took the fall for the leaks in his embassy. Bossy also revisits the vexed issue of William Parry, who was at one time claimed to be working for the English, and at another time executed for plotting against them. I felt that he handled it very poorly in his other book, but it was much better explained here. It is still not entirely clear, but that apparently isn't for lack of digging by Bossy. He seems to have backed off a little on his identification of 'Fagot' as Giordano Bruno, and he is also less harsh towards the English, especially the intelligence community. Whether the reader finds these improvements or not is best left to them. I would recommend this to people interested in Elizabethan intelligence work, especially Walsingham. Readers may be interested to know that the two books form part of the basis for the thriller Prophecy by S. J. Parris (i.e. Stephanie Merritt) geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
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This absorbing account of Catholic and anti-Catholic plots and machinations at the English, French, and exiled Scottish courts in the latter part of the sixteenth century is a sequel to John Bossy's highly acclaimed Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair. It tells the story of an espionage operation in Elizabethan London that was designed to find out what side France would take in the hostilities between Protestant England and the Catholic powers of Europe. France was a Catholic country whose king was nonetheless hostile to Spanish and papal aggression, Bossy explains, but the king's sister-in-law, Mary Queen of Scots, in custody in England since 1568, was a magnet for Catholic activists, and the French ambassador in London, Michel de Castelnau, was of uncertain leanings. Bossy relates how Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsingham, found a mole in Castelnau's household establishment, who passed information to someone in Walsingham's employ. Bossy discovers the identity of these persons, what items of intelligence were passed over, and what the English government decided to do with the information. He describes how individuals were arrested or fled, a political crisis occurred, an ambassador was expelled, deals were made. He concludes with a discussion of the authenticity of Elizabethan secret operations, arguing that they were not theatrical devices to prop up an unpopular regime but were a response to genuine threats of counter-revolution inspired by Catholic zeal. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)942.055History and Geography Europe England and Wales England 1485-1603, Tudors 1558-1603, Elizabeth ILC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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The late great John Bossy was a family friend, and my sister's godfather; his best book is still Christianity in the West, 1400-1700, but towards the end of his career he achieved a remarkable coup of winning both the Wolfson History Prize and the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction for Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair, which examined the connections between the Renaissance philosopher and the murky world of espionage in Elizabethan London. This short, dense book concerns one particular wrinkle of the wider story of which Giordano Bruno was also part - identifying the individual who at a crucial moment stole the French ambassador's correspondence and passed it to the agents of Queen Elizabeth.
I came to this soon after reading the story of Alexander Wilson, and it is salutary to reflect on how much intelligence-gathering had changed across the centuries. What we can see of the Elizabethan world is based very much on the transmission of written records; the nascent bureaucracy of the state required hard copies, as it were. Obviously the whispered conversations do not survive, but Bossy feels pretty confident that by putting all the pieces together - and allowing for various mis-dating of key documents over time - he is able to give us a picture of what was happening in and around the French embassy in London in the 1580s, and who it was that exposed the ambassador's secrets.
Having said that, this is a book where the trees are more important than the forest, and I'd have liked a few more signposts along the way to remind us of why the story is important. It's all there, but one has to dig for it a bit, and I think the book needs to be taken as a close sequel to Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair, which I read a very long time ago. ( )