For the first time the role played by women in the espionage networks of both sides in the Civil Wars is being recovered through the pioneering research conducted by Nadine Akkerman, Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Professor Akkerman tells publisher, Mike Gibbs, how she uncovered the extent and importance of these women – known at the time as “She-Intelligencers” – the techniques they used and the risks that they took.
Professor Akkerman’s groundbreaking research is published in her book, Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain published in paperback by Oxford University Press.
More recently she was co-author with Peter Langman of an exploration of the techniques and tradecraft of early modern spies entitled, Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration published by Yale University Press.
