This edited article about espionage around the Spanish Armada originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 706 published on 26 July 1975.

The Spanish Armada (top) preoccuppied Elizabeth’s spymaster general, Sir Francis Walsingham (centre), but of all Britain’s spies, Christopher Marlowe, who was killed in a Deptford tavern (bottom), was the greatest loss. Pictures by Eric Parker

Who defeated the Spanish Armada? “Sir Francis Drake,” would be the universal answering chorus.

But as anyone who lived in the days of Good Queen Bess would have told you, Drake was only half the answer. Behind him lurked another Sir Francis – a knight named Walsingham, Britain’s super-spy of the sixteenth century.

He was tall, slender, dark and mysterious, like an Italian cavalier. His tread was soft and he spoke only when it was necessary, but his eyes were everywhere. “He is my Moor,” laughed Queen Elizabeth, likening him to a stealthy Arab servant, but she knew his value to her and to her realm.

Walsingham’s official title was Secretary of State, an office he gained after many years in Europe as diplomat and ambassador. At home, as England’s spy-master, he was never short of enemies, for these were the times when England and Spain were perpetually in an ugly mood with each other.

With war always on the cards, Walsingham concentrated his agents in Spain. The star among them was Antony Standen who, using the name of Pompeo Pelligrini, and his own great charm, ingratiated himself with the courtiers of Spain’s King Philip in Madrid.

Thus it was that three years before the mighty Spanish Armada sailed up the Channel to invade England, Standen and his fellow spies were reporting to Walsingham that the Spaniards were assembling a great fleet in Cadiz harbour, and their plan was to use it to attack England.

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This edited article about tea-clippers originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

The Cutty Sark by John S Smith

Protesting creaks came from the Ariel’s three masts as the wind billowed the sails and whistled through the rigging of the tea clipper tied up at the jetty in China’s Foochow harbour in 1866.

In his cabin, the skipper looked up from his charts and turned to his mate. “Are we ready to sail?” he asked.

The mate nodded. “Cargo’s all stowed,” he said. “What do you reckon of the other clippers, sir?”

“They’re fine vessels,” mused the skipper. “But we’ll show ‘em a clean pair of heels, all the way to England.”

Opening the door of his cabin, the skipper stepped on to the deck to look at his competitors. There were four other sailing ships, either tied up at the jetty or anchored midstream. All were waiting for the right moment to set sail for England and each wanted to get there first.

These were tea clippers, fine vessels of the mid-nineteenth century with sleek lines for fast speed. If their freight space was small, this did not matter for the cargo they carried was worth a good deal in London. But it had to be got there quickly to fetch the best price and to keep its quality. Consequently, there was always keen competition among the clipper captains to be the first to arrive in London.

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This edited article about County Durham originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

At Jarrow Bede taught children the message of the Gospel, by Peter Jackson

On September 27, 1825, a steam engine was standing on a newly-built railway line near the little Durham village of Shildon. It would have looked ridiculous to us today, for it was very small, and had a tall funnel that was quite out of proportion to the rest of its size. It looked rather like a present-day tar-boiler, and was coupled up to a string of trucks and improvised carriages.

“This is a fine engine,” said a man with a tall, shiny stovepipe hat and a green brocade waistcoat.

“Aye,” replied the friend who stood beside him. “Our Mr. Stephenson’s done a right good job!”

Suddenly a man appeared, struggling through the crowd towards the engine.

“There he is!” called the man in the stovepipe hat. “Mr. Stephenson!”

George Stephenson smiled at the excited crowd, then climbed on to the engine tender. The man in the stovepipe hat, his friend, and the rest of the assembled crowd, climbed aboard. Although tickets had only been issued to 300 people, nearly 200 more scrambled on to the train!

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This edited article about swimming originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

Matthew Webb was the first man to swim the English Channel by John Keay

Just 100 years ago next month a lugger and two rowing boats took a little under 22 hours to make the crossing of the English Channel from Dover to Calais.

That may sound a long time to take to cover a distance on the map of some 21 miles but, in fact, their zig-zag crossing was dictated by the movements of a former merchant seaman battling against the waves and tide to become the first to swim that famous stretch of water that separates England and the Continent.

Captain Matthew Webb, a native of Shropshire, had set his heart on making the historic crossing. Early in August, 1875, he had to give up after being in the water for seven hours but had drifted hopelessly off course.

Less than a fortnight later he tried again and succeeded in swimming almost 40 miles through three changes of tides to win a place in swimming history. Sadly, Webb the hero did not enjoy his glory for very long. Eight years later when attempting to swim the rapids above Niagara Falls the task beat him and he was drowned.

However Webb’s Channel crossing did much to popularise swimming as a sporting pastime. Today we take a running tap and a purified swimming pool for granted but it must be remembered that the first swimming pool was not built in Britain until 1828.

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This edited article about the Graf Zeppelin originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

The Graf Zeppelin by Alberto Salinas

Mountains to the left, mountains to the right and, far worse, mountains straight ahead. They surrounded a twisting valley in eastern Siberia through which Dr. Hugo Eckener was piloting his huge airship, the Graf Zeppelin. The jagged peaks were the Stanovoi mountains, and the pass below the airship, now forcing it to the limit of its altitude, was over 1,500 metres high. The winding canyon grew narrower. While the passengers in their luxurious lounge felt that they could have leaned out to touch the rocks, the crew knew that any sudden gust of wind could blow them to certain destruction on the mountains.

Then they saw the summit of the pass ahead, but still above them. Time seemed to stand still as Eckener squeezed a few more metres out of the silver Zeppelin until, with only a metre or so to spare, they were over the peak. Before them lay the welcoming Sea of Okhotsk, sparkling in the sunlight.

The historic flight had begun on August 8, 1929, from Lakehurst, just south of New York. From there the huge airship, named after its inventor, Count Zeppelin, had travelled across the Atlantic to Germany and thence across Europe to Russia.

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This edited article about Charles Dickens originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

The charismatic novelist, Charles Dickens, gave dramatic readings which captivated his spellbound audiences. Picture by Neville Dear

The fashionably dressed audience applauded enthusiastically as the curtain went up. Most had paid heavily for their seats, some as much as £5, which was a lot of money in 1870. But none regretted it. It was money well spent to hear the great Charles Dickens reading from his own works.

Dickens stood there in the glare of the gas lights, a grey-haired, bearded man in a perfectly tailored evening suit with diamonds gleaming in his shirt front, but looking a good deal older than his 58 years. Then, as the house lights went down, Britain’s greatest living author began to speak. Within a few minutes, no fewer than thirty members of the audience had fainted.

It was not unusual. The medical attendants who set about rendering first aid had known what to expect as soon as they had read the programme. Even veterans of the Crimea were likely to feel distinctly queer when Charles Dickens read one of his bloodthirsty episodes, because he always made it sound even worse than the real thing.

Reading in public from his own work was something that Dickens started quite late in life.

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This edited article about General Gordon originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

General Gordon of Khartoum by Graham Coton

In London, the bells were ringing to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. In houses, great and small, glasses were being raised, and in the streets people were linking arms to join in the singing of Auld Lang Syne. It was a time for jollity, of optimism and hope for a better and more prosperous year than the last. A time when the future was something to celebrate.

But far away in the besieged city of Khartoum there was no cause to celebrate the New Year for the very good reason that it promised only suffering and probably death for everyone behind its walls. For nearly three hundred days, the men, women and children there had been surrounded and hemmed in by an evergrowing army of rebels under the control of the fanatical Mahdi, the self-styled Messiah of the Mohammedans.

Already the situation seemed hopeless. The streets swept by shell fire; rations down to the barest minimum for survival; hundreds already carried away by disease; troops continually deserting; the city held daily with the greatest difficulty and loss of life; communications with the outside world completely cut off: it was hardly surprising that those who still survived saw no reason to celebrate that first day of 1885.

It was, sadly, a situation which would not have occurred but for the stubborn pride of General Gordon, who had been sent to the Sudan charged with a commission to withdraw the British from the Egyptian garrisons of Suakin, Berber and Khartoum. Instead, on arriving at Khartoum, he had decided that its fall would inevitably lead to a widespread revolt and the eventual control of the whole of the Sudan by the Mahdi.

Fearing nothing, and convinced that he was an instrument in the hands of God, he had decided to hold Khartoum. After coming to this decision, he wrote cheerfully in his Journal: “I own to having been very insubordinate to Her Majesty’s Government and its officials, but it is my nature, and I cannot help it. I know if I was chief I would never employ myself, for I am incorrigible.” The possible fate of those under his care apparently did not seem to have worried him unduly.

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This edited article about protecting and conserving Britain’s heritage originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

Londinium as the Romans built it, by Ralph Bruce

The occupant of an earth-satellite poised in space over Britain at the right altitude, would be able to see almost at a glance, if he knew what to look out for, evidence of man’s existence here during more than 5,000 years. This would be the record of his way of life, at first agricultural and then industrial, from the time when he originally established himself and laid his ‘signature’ upon the land. From Muckle Flugga at the tip of Shetland to the granite crags of Land’s End, history and prehistory would be spread out beneath his gaze. This is what we call our heritage.

His eye would be caught by the greatest prehistoric monument within our shores, Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, the masterpiece of Stone Age Man which may have taken 1,000 years to build and was completed perhaps 3,500 years ago. Its true purpose is still not known. Not far from it, he would see the Avebury Stone Circle, the largest of its kind in all Europe, and the avenue of giant stones leading to Silbury Hill, the largest man-made mound in Europe. He would see, too, the hundreds of round and oval burial-mounds, especially in Wiltshire, marking the last resting-places of chieftains who died over 3,000 years ago.

All these are impressive relics of Stone Age and Bronze Age Man, the earliest inhabitants of Britain. The hills and ridges of Berkshire, Dorset, Derbyshire and elsewhere carry the relics of their successors. These are the great earth ramparts and ditches of the hill-forts established by Iron Age Man. They may be seen from the air, but you can see and explore them on foot. All are prehistoric sites. All were there when, in the last years B.C., the Romans arrived in Britain.

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This edited article about espionage originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

The famous World War Two spy, Violette Szabo, was trapped by an advance guard of the German army

The cinema and the spy thriller have given us a highly coloured picture of the secret agent at work. Armed with a veritable arsenal of fancy equipment, ranging from cameras in cigarette lighters to seemingly innocuous items which turn out to be something capable of blowing up a building, the secret agent of fiction wanders around the world, gaily taking everything in his stride. The truth is something rather different.

The secret agent, which is really a more polite term for a spy, has been with us for a long, long time, and for most of that time his work has been lonely and boring. But, of course, it was still not without its dangers, as we will show you in this new series.

Espionage, in war and in peace, is almost as old as man himself. Certainly it began much earlier than the times of the Old Testament in which it is recorded that Moses sent 12 spies into the land of Canaan. Four thousand years ago, the Egypt of the Pharaohs had a highly sophisticated espionage network in its conquered territories. And espionage has never lacked for its practitioners at any time in history, even though, when caught, the spy can always be certain of two things – that he will be disowned by his masters and that he will be imprisoned or executed.

Probably the most illustrious of all ancient spies was Mithridates, who became king of Pontus in Asia Minor when he was, only 11 years old. Later, he fled from his tempestuous mother and in his wanderings he was said to have learned 25 languages and made a special study of poisons. These attributes Mithridates turned to good account as a spy, a career he pursued while disguised as a caravan boy. He soon learned so much about the strength of tribes in Asia Minor that he was able to vanquish his mother and get back his throne, where he ruled as one of the greatest tyrants of all time.

The ancient Romans had a highly developed espionage service, although their methods were sometimes strangely crude. When a Roman delegation went to the camp of Syphax, king of Numidia, to arrange a peace treaty, the whole delegation were high ranking military spies. Only their leader, Lelius, wore uniform; all the rest were disguised as slaves.

To get information about the strength of the Numidian army, Lelius simply contrived to make one of the Roman horses break away from the delegation’s camp. The slaves then chased the animal through the Numidian army lines, making careful mental note of all they saw.

But one day, a Numidian army officer stopped one of the Roman “slaves” and declared that he had seen him before, in an officers’ training school in Greece, and that he was sure the slave was in fact a Roman officer.

At this, Lelius stepped forward and viciously slashed the “slave” with his horsewhip. The Numidian officer knew that, according to Roman law, it was forbidden under pain of death to strike a Roman officer. What would the “slave” do? Time and time again, Lelius lashed the man until, like a cringing animal, the “slave” crept away. The Numidian was then satisfied: the man could not be an officer or Lelius would never have struck him.

As old as the spy’s profession is his bag of tricks, repeated and permutated down all the centuries, but never losing its fascination. In the Franco-German War of 1870-1, spies disguised as priests walked out of Paris while it was under siege and found their way unmolested into the German lines. In the war between France and Austria in 1813, cryptic writing, which aims at disguising important information with harmless phrases, was widely used. Thus, “Your brother has recovered from his illness and is now in good health” meant, “The Austrian army is mobilised and ready to march.”

One of the papers found in the Austrian army headquarters after that war was the following “business” letter written by a spy from Trieste. Although the “business” seems harmless, the recipient’s knowledge of what the code meant gave the letter a new and vital significance:

“Dear Sir,

“I hope that you are already in receipt of my last letter. I arrived at 5 a.m. today in Trieste to look for the goods that you are particularly anxious to obtain here.

“I have secured the following.

1 cwt, of cinnamon (a fortress)

2 cases of lemons, average size (guns)

60 ditto, smaller size

“These are being stored meantime not far from the shore.

Within the next few days you may expect to receive the following:

4 cases of bitter oranges (earthworks)

2 casks of eels (magazines)

400 sacks of rice (hundredweights of powder)

450 sacks of almonds (light infantry)

1 small cask of figs (brigadier)

1 small cask of pure oil (lieutenant-general)

“For all these articles I have paid a deposit of 1,700 lire (infantry), debiting the amount to your account. Trusting this meets with your entire satisfaction and may prove extremely profitable to you . . .”

Sending such information by post was nothing new. In ancient times, when the “post” was simply a slave courier, the Persians inscribed their secret messages on clay tablets, then covered the tablets with wax, so that the words could not be seen. Then, if the courier was caught, he appeared to be carrying only a blank tablet.

Another favourite spy trick, used as late as the Second World War, was to insert cipher information in the personal advertisement columns of newspapers. When the Germans bombed Paris in the First World War, for instance, their intelligence service in Switzerland eagerly scanned the columns of a well-known French newspaper for days afterwards, until they saw an advertisement that read something like:

“19-22. Bien arrivee avec nos trois amis, mere malade. 3,160.”

The advertisement, placed by a spy, meant:

“Nineteenth district of Paris, Square No. 22 on the military map, bomb hit, three victims, tremendous effect on the population. Sent by agent number 3,160.”

On the French and Belgian battlefields in the First World War, windmills were a favourite means of communication for spies. Once, a Russian spy decided to make use of a windmill just in front of the Russian lines.

For an hour he pleaded with the miller and his wife, with a bribe of fifty roubles, to help the Allied cause by turning the arms of the windmill in a clockwise direction as a signal to the Russians if the Germans should arrive.

When the miller adamantly refused to have anything to do with such an idea, the spy stripped three of the sails, bound the miller’s wife hand and foot; then tied the helpless miller to the remaining sail of the windmill, which he turned upwards.

The spy’s plan, of course, was that if the Germans did arrive they would certainly release the miller by bringing him down to earth. As soon as they did that, one of the stripped sails would go upwards, signalling to the Russians that they were there. That, in fact, was exactly what did happen. As soon as the Germans made to release the miller, the Russians raked the mill with artillery fire, wiping out the enemy.

Today, with most of the world in an uneasy state of peace, there is still plenty of work for spies. The peacetime spy is an industrial spy, whose job is to steal one company’s secrets and sell them to others – or to use them for himself. During the years of the industrial revolution a British ironmaster and industrial spy named Foley played the part of a wandering minstrel by tramping from town to town in Europe with his violin. His real aim was to find out how the Continental method of treating iron and producing steel worked, for it was considered superior to the British method. Returning to England with his secret, “Fiddler” Foley developed his factory at Stourbridge in Worcestershire and became a millionaire.

“Bugs”, or listening devices, are the chief tools of the modern industrial spy. A bug invented by Emanuel Mittleman, of New York, can be planted in the base of the victim’s telephone, and the spy can then eavesdrop from anywhere.

What happens is that the spy dials the number of the bugged telephone and the moment before the telephone rings he blows a single special note with a tiny mouth organ that comes with the bug. The mouth organ note activates the microphone in the base of the telephone at the other end. Two things then happen – the telephone does not ring and the spy is able to hear every word in the room, even though the bugged telephone is still on the hook.

Followers of James Bond and other modern espionage heroes know how important is the miniature camera in the spy’s toolkit. The one most used is, strange to say, one that is on sale to the public – the German Minox miniature camera.

The Minox is only three inches long by an inch wide and weighs only four ounces when fully loaded. It can take sharp pictures down to a range of eight-inches, and with 36 pictures on a single film, it is the perfect instrument for photographing the enemy’s secret documents at close range.

The twelve spies who went into the land of Canaan for Moses had only their eyes with which to record information. Three and a half thousand years later the tools are different – but the basic job is still the same.

This edited article about Robert Burns originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

Robert Burns from the painting by Alexander Naismith

The most famous and best loved of Scotland’s poets was born on January 25th 1759, inside the cottage at Alloway in Ayrshire which his father had built with his own hands.

It was here that Robert Burns spent the first seven years of his life as the son of a farmer. At the age of 15 young Burns had learnt enough about farming to enable him to become a skilled ploughman, but though he once wrote of himself: “I have not the most distant pretensions to being . . . a Gentleman. I am simply Robert Burns, at your service. I was born at the Plough”, it is not true to say, as many have claimed in the past, that he was an uneducated illiterate who suddenly began to write poems without any knowledge of literature. Burns received careful instruction from his father and from his schoolmaster and, as a child, would take poetry books with him into the fields to read. From his mother he gained a wealth of traditional ballads and folk tales which was to help inspire some of his best poetry and at 16 young Burns wrote his first song, ‘Handsome Nell’.

His early love poems and country verses were published in 1786, making him the toast of Edinburgh at 28.

In 1791 he decided to become an exciseman at Dumfries and in his spare time carried out a most important literary task which many believe to be his finest achievement. This was the provision of songs for the Scots Musical Museum and Select Collection of Original Scottish airs. At this time also, he wrote in one day what is considered to be the greatest of his longer poems, ‘Tam O’Shanter’.

Then, in 1796, Burns found that he had to pay the final penalty for his intemperate drinking habits. On July 21st, 1796, Scotland’s finest poet died, at the tragically early age of 37.