Mary, Queen of Scots prison letters finally decoded

Experts say codebreakers' discovery is most significant about royal for more than a century

A team of codebreakers have cracked secret coded messages in letters written by Mary, Queen of Scots while she was imprisoned by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, in what experts have said is the most significant discovery about Mary for more than a century.

Fifty-seven letters dating from 1578 to 1584, a few years before Mary Stuart was beheaded on 8 February 1587, have been deciphered. Fifty of the letters revealed scripts that were not previously known to historians.