John Cooper's The Queens Agent, a book about Francis Walsingham, adviser to Queen Elizabeth I and perhaps the first in a long line of British spymasters (culminating with Judy Dench) is not a historical novel but a hard-core academic biography, and not a very good one at that. Walsingham himself gets lost in the far more interesting story of Elizabethan England – a story political plots and palace intrigues, the establishment of the English Protestantism, the colonization of North America, and the defeat of the great Spanish Armada.
And that is an engrossing tale, indeed. So Cooper's book is added to our book list, and if you are not looking for a quick read but instead for something you can really get in get your teeth into, is highly recommended.
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