Secret Letters of Mary Queen of Scots on SBS and SBS on Demand – One of Britain’s most famous and controversial monarchs, Mary Queen of Scots spent much of her life in captivity.
To maintain her power, build alliances and outwit her enemies, she wrote and smuggled out hundreds of coded letters. For centuries, historians believed many of these letters had been lost or destroyed.
That changed when three amateur codebreakers – Satoshi Tomokiyo, George Lasry and Norbert Biermann – deciphered a collection of mysterious coded documents and discovered they were authored by Mary.
The decoded letters shed new light on Mary’s imprisonment in England: her complaints of ill health and financial strain, her fear of betrayal, her persistent plotting to regain the throne, and her fraught relationship with her son, James VI.
They reveal her resilience under relentless surveillance by Elizabeth I’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the extraordinary lengths she went to in order to secretly correspond with her allies and supporters.
Set against the dramatic backdrop of Mary’s rise and fall – from infant queen to prisoner, from abusive marriages to violent scandals – this documentary brings together historians and the modern codebreakers who unlocked her words.
Secret Letters of Mary Queen of Scots on SBS and SBS on Demand – Premiere / Sunday 16 November at 8.25pm
TV Central SBS content HERE
Secret Letters of Mary Queen of Scots on SBS and SBS on Demand
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