London's Triumph - Hardcover

Stephen Alford

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 024100358X ISBN 13: 9780241003589

Publisher: Penguin, 2017

Synopsis

Londons Triumph

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Alford is the author of the highly acclaimed The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Review

"In this fascinating history of Tudor London, Alford helps readers to recognize the most significant of this burgeoning municipality’s stones and men and to tease out the globe-shaping meaning of its dynamic buzz...Renaissance urban life unfolds as stirring drama." - Booklist, starred, on LONDON'S TRIUMPH

"Alford makes expert use of individual lives to bring London's various stages to life...These and many other stories bring the past to life in warmly human terms, as do Alford's evocative descriptions of the city's changing landscape and architecture...Solid scholarly history written with an accessible verve that will appeal to general readers." - Kirkus Reviews on LONDON'S TRIUMPH

"Alford eloquently shows how Renaissance merchants and global exploration allowed London to come of age, transforming from a city subordinate to other European hubs into an ambitious player with financial might. It’s a vibrant depiction of London’s rising merchant class during the Tudor era." - Publishers Weekly for LONDON'S TRIUMPH

"The secret agents who labored to prove Mary’s guilt and bring about her execution are the stars of this meticulous chronicle . . . Elizabeth’s spies routinely used the rack for interrogations; torture was then, as now, justified as a means of protecting 'the security of the state.'" - The New Yorker on THE WATCHERS

"Alford, a fellow in history at Cambridge University, 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." - Starred review, Publishers Weekly on THE WATCHERS

"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." - Shelf Awareness on THE WATCHERS

"It 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 . . . [An] engaging and perfectly pitched narrative. . . . Alford weaves together the bewilderingly complex threads of plots and counterplots so skillfully that as a reader you are never left floundering." - BBC History Magazine (named a Pick of the Month) on THE WATCHERS

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 024100358X
• ISBN 13: 9780241003589
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400