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Historical person
1563–1612
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, was a leading English statesman under Elizabeth I and James I. He managed intelligence, succession politics and early Stuart government, and played a central role in uncovering the Gunpowder Plot.
Tracy Borman’s The King’s Witch places Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury within a narrative shaped by court politics and dynastic power, political ambition and government, and social change and the pressures of ordinary life. Peter Tonkin’s Shadow of the Axe places Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury within a narrative shaped by political ambition and government, empire, conquest and resistance, and crime, espionage and covert power. Other novels featuring Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury include Rory Clements’s Revenger, Rory Clements’s Prince, Rory Clements’s Traitor, Rory Clements’s The Heretics, and Elizabeth Fremantle’s Watch the Lady.
Historical context
Series
The King’s Witch Trilogy follows the fictional healer and secret Catholic Frances Gorges from the final days of Elizabeth I into the unstable first two decades of James VI and I’s reign. Drawn from rural Hampshire into royal service, Frances survives accusations of witchcraft, religious persecution and a…
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The Queen’s Intelligencer series fictionalises the career of Robert Poley, a real Elizabethan agent associated with the Babington Plot and the death of Christopher Marlowe. In publication order, Poley infiltrates the Essex circle, manages the 1603 succession, follows the Gunpowder conspirators, works against a poison network during the…
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The John Shakespeare series follows an Elizabethan intelligencer working first for Francis Walsingham and later Robert Cecil. Murder investigations become inseparable from Catholic conspiracies, war with Spain, court faction and the developing machinery of state surveillance. Set between 1582 and the mid-1590s, the novels move through London, recusant…
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The Tudor Trilogy follows three generations of women whose proximity to the English crown makes marriage, faith and family matters of state. Firebrand, originally published as Queen’s Gambit, centres on Katherine Parr during the final years of Henry VIII. Sisters of Treason turns to Katherine and Mary Grey…
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Standalone books
