Nolanus Nullanus

Charles Nicholl

  • Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair by John Bossy
    Yale, 294 pp, £16.95, September 1991, ISBN 0 300 04993 5
  • The Elizabethan Secret Service by Alison Plowden
    Harvester Wheatsheaf, 158 pp, £30.00, September 1991, ISBN 0 7108 1152 7
  • The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe by Victor Thoren
    Cambridge, 523 pp, £40.00, May 1991, ISBN 0 521 35158 8

The files of the Elizabethan intelligence service are a rich and oddly neglected source: rich in historical detail, in the surprising appearance of famous names, in the whole tawdry but fascinating psychology of the spying game. There is in them a curious sense of déjà vu. Under the directorship of Sir Francis Walsingham, the security services featured much the same cast of moles, buggers, double agents and dirty tricksters that has entertained us in more recent spy ‘scandals’. The technology has improved – in Walsingham’s day, the fastest intelligence could travel was the speed of a horse – and the targets have different names, but the methods and motives of the secret world have not really changed.

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