Iona Mclaren

Could anyone be trusted in Tudor and Stuart England?

An investigation of the codes, disguises and invisible inks used by plotters and spymasters captures the paranoia of an age when secret messages could be hidden anywhere

Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, by John de Critz the Elder. [Getty Images]
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  • Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration

    Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman

    Yale, pp. 336, £20

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