Elizabethan Secret Agent: The Untold Story of William Ashby is the biography of William Ashby, Elizabethan intelligence agent and diplomat who served as ambassador to Scotland during the Spanish Armada crisis. It provides a fresh social, political and foreign policy insight from the perspective of a gentleman spy who took part in some of the most important events of his time. Much of the book is focused on the Anglo-Scottish geo-political relationship during the decade of 1580-1590, with its machinations and bizarre background stories. Prior to Ashby’s ambassadorial appointment, he served as a senior ‘intelligencer’ for Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spymaster.
Elizabethan Secret Agent: The Untold Story of William Ashby is the biography of William Ashby, Elizabethan intelligence agent and diplomat who served as ambassador to Scotland during the Spanish Armada crisis. It provides a fresh social, political and foreign policy insight from the perspective of a gentleman spy who took part in some of the most important events of his time. Much of the book is focused on the Anglo-Scottish geo-political relationship during the decade of 1580-1590, with its machinations and bizarre background stories. Prior to Ashby’s ambassadorial appointment, he served as a senior ‘intelligencer’ for Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spymaster.
‘[William Ashby] held an important and perilous position‘
‘A fascinating journey into the tangled web of the Tudor and Stuart courts’
’Tim Ashby’s writing brings the story alive – this is no long list of dry dates and battles, but the story of a real life, lived both in the courts of Europe and the stinking closes of Edinburgh.‘