Adrian Tinniswood
Hour of the She-Intelligencer
Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain
By Nadine Akkerman
Oxford University Press 288pp £20
In September 1656 a London apothecary, Anthony Hinton, was arrested on suspicion of using his premises beside the Old Bailey as a clearing house for letters on their way to exiled Royalists on the Continent. Interrogated by Cromwell’s own intelligence officers, Hinton quickly confessed his guilt and gave up the names of a number of spies with ties to the Sealed Knot, one of the Royalist secret societies operating in England during the Commonwealth. His list included Susan Hyde, the sister of Sir Edward Hyde, one of Charles II’s closest advisers. Hinton claimed that she had been sending useful information to fellow Royalists for more than four years, using a variety of ciphers and codenames.
Hinton’s claims were true. Hyde’s last letter, written in September 1656, warned Charles II that there was a leak in the network. She suspected that a double agent was at work. So there was: Sir Robert Honywood, master of the household to Charles II’s aunt Elizabeth of Bohemia, was spying for Cromwell. But it was Hinton’s evidence that was Hyde’s undoing. Some weeks after his confession three officers arrived at the house in Wiltshire where she was staying. They ransacked her chamber, searched her for incriminating papers and carted her off to be examined in London, where she was so frightened by her interrogators that she had a mental breakdown. She died in prison at Lambeth a few days later and was soon forgotten. Even her brother, the great chronicler of the Civil Wars, made no mention in his writings of her contribution to the war effort. Broken and overlooked, she disappeared from history.
As Nadine Akkerman’s intriguing new book makes clear, in life, as in death, women spies – ‘she-intelligencers’ in the parlance of the day – passed unnoticed in the 17th century. If they were captured, they were usually released, partly in deference to their sex and partly because they were regarded
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Under its longest-serving editor, Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair was that rare thing – a New York society magazine that published serious journalism.
@PeterPeteryork looks at what Carter got right.
Peter York - Deluxe Editions
Peter York: Deluxe Editions - When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter
literaryreview.co.uk
Henry James returned to America in 1904 with three objectives: to see his brother William, to deliver a series of lectures on Balzac, and to gather material for a pair of books about modern America.
Peter Rose follows James out west.
Peter Rose - The Restless Analyst
Peter Rose: The Restless Analyst - Henry James Comes Home: Rediscovering America in the Gilded Age by Peter Brooks...
literaryreview.co.uk
Vladimir Putin served his apprenticeship in the KGB toward the end of the Cold War, a period during which Western societies were infiltrated by so-called 'illegals'.
Piers Brendon examines how the culture of Soviet spycraft shaped his thinking.
Piers Brendon - Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll
Piers Brendon: Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll - The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker
literaryreview.co.uk