"'An excellent biography... Alford writes with clarity and pace... and offers a wonderfully rich description of Lord Burghley's material world: the maps and plans decorating his walls, the mutton and quails and calves' feet that streamed out of his kitchens, and the busts of the Emperor Charles V and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent that watched over the courtyard of Burghley House.' (J. P. D. Cooper, Times Literary Supplement) 'Alford has the biographer's natural sympathy for his subject and so does the reader of this engaging book.' (Robert C. Braddock, Renaissance Quarterly) 'Written by a master of the source material who has a feel for the nature of the Tudor Court and writes with balance and sympathy.' (Diarmaid MacCulloch, University of Oxford)"
