Secret history

History’s Ultimate Spies TV Yesterday, scheduled for Friday 16 October

Here’s a film that focuses on those who developed spy networks in the days before mass communication. It explores how the methods employed by these pioneers in subterfuge and skullduggery are still in use around the world today.

Expect tales of Elizabethan England, the era when Francis Walsingham’s clandestine operations entrapped Mary, Queen of Scots; France, when Cardinal Richelieu was in his pomp; and the American Civil War, when Allan Pinkerton was head of the Union Intelligence Service.

Watch Yesterday to learn the tricks of Elizabethan spymaster Francis Walsingham’s trade