I first talked about the idea for this book to my old and firm friend John Cramsie in the fading autumn light of the Tudor battlefield of Flodden in the border country of Northumberland. It was a spooky place in which to discuss what turned out to be a book that tells the stories of some very shadowy Elizabethans. John and I have talked about all kinds of things (some reputable, others barely) on our many travels and adventures together; and it was through his kindness that I was able to give a public lecture at Union College in Schenectady, New York on torture in Elizabeth’s reign, an important strand in The Watchers.
John Guy, who trained me as a historian, has been unhesitatingly and unquestioningly supportive over the years, at St Andrews and more recently in Cambridge, where our dinners at Clare College are doubly enriched by Clare’s long and distinguished echoes of Tudor scholarship. I owe to John more than he perhaps realizes.
My literary agent Peter Robinson, with his sharp eyes and wise advice, helped to give a shape and purpose to the book proposal, and George Lucas saw its potential in the United States. Simon Winder at the Penguin Press and Peter Ginna at Bloomsbury USA have brought to the project their extraordinary editorial and publishing skills, as enthusiastic and patient as they have been frank; to them both I am deeply grateful. In helping me to turn a proposal into a manuscript and then a manuscript into a book they have been ably supported by Marina Kemp of Penguin in London and Pete Beatty of Bloomsbury in New York. Marina, along with Tom Penn, very kindly read the whole manuscript through. I must thank the designers at Penguin and Bloomsbury for all their efforts, and David Watson for copy-editing the book so impeccably.
Now that I am about to say goodbye to King’s as a Fellow, it seems supremely appropriate to thank my friends here for everything they have taught me about history and academic life in well over a decade, especially (though not only) Michael Bate, John Dunn, Victoria Harris, Ross Harrison, Istvan Hont, Peter Jones, Melissa Lane, Michael Sonenscher, Gareth Stedman Jones, Alice Taylor and Megan Vaughan. The King’s College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge has been a quite extraordinary place to teach and learn history.
Many other friends and colleagues in the Cambridge Faculty of History have over the years helped me to formulate and test my ideas. I should thank in particular Jessica Sharkey for her expertise on Rome in the sixteenth century, and Ceri Law for keeping me on my toes in our supervisions together. This has been a theme of my teaching in Cambridge. Something like four generations of undergraduate historians – especially those I was privileged to teach in my special subject on Tudor monarchy – have all helped to shape my thinking about the history of the sixteenth century. I must mention specially Ryan Day, with whom I have had some wonderful conversations about the Tudors, and who very kindly invited me to Ampleforth College to talk about Catholics and the Elizabethan state.
I have spoken about some of the characters and situations in this book in lectures and at conferences at (among other places) the University of Kent (for which I am very grateful to Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox), the University of Warwick, and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Rachel Hammersley and Fred Schurink in Newcastle showed me great kindness, and I am most grateful to Luc Racaut for his help in identifying French pamphlets on Edmund Campion. I thank, too, those who hosted and attended a lecture I gave at Vauxhall Cross in London on Elizabethan spies.
The librarians and archivists of the British Library, Cambridge University Library and King’s College Library and Archive Centre have been effortlessly professional. I am very proud of my membership of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, which is one of the gems of British life, and where a good deal of the groundwork was done for this book. Another redoubt of intellectual engagement (though less well known nationally or even locally) is the group of deep thinkers and muses that gathers monthly in the Percy Arms Hotel in Chatton.
Without my family – my parents, Jennifer and Tony Alford; Joyce and David Scott (to whom this book is dedicated with love); Louise, Mark, Hannah and Laura Challenger; Dianne Shea; and above all Max and our darling Matilda – I should never have got very far as an historian. Only a family who lives with someone buried most of the time under paper or staring at a glowing screen knows from the inside both the fun and hard labour of writing a book. My memory of finishing The Watchers will always be imprinted with that of the first months Max, Matilda and I spent together. What I owe to them both for that spring and summer is beyond calculation.
Of Flash and Zorro I am reminded of the Tudor proverb: Let the cat wink and let the mouse run. Rarely do they – the mice or indeed Zorro – get very far. Flash, however, never gives second chances.
Stephen Alford
King’s College, Cambridge
February 2012