July 2007 Her Majesty's Spymaster. Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage by Stephen Budiansky. This was a very good book and a pretty quick read (215 pages). For those of you who like Tom Clancy books, you will probably enjoy this one. This is definitely one of those books that balances detail with a broader perspective on the times. Set in mid-16th Century England, the author paints a broad picture of the forces, mostly religious, that divide Europe at the time. At the same time he offers a detailed biography of Walsingham and the events that shaped him. The book starts off with the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre in Paris in 1572, when Walsingham was Ambassador to France. I thought that the author did a good job to stay above the religious debates of the 16th Century and to present a political history without taking sides. Much of the last half of the book describes the net that Walsingham patiently wove around Mary Queen of Scots to spring the trap on those wanting to overthrow Elizabeth with the help of the Spanish and French. For anyone (like me) who likes to read Church history, I think this is a good book to read for understanding a little bit more of the political forces at work at the time of the Reformation. Back to reading list