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A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 AS CHOSEN BY THE TIMES NEW STATESMAN TELEGRAPH AND TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
A groundbreaking portrait of the most turbulent century in English history
Among foreign observers seventeenthcentury England was known as DevilLand a diabolical country of fallen angels torn apart by seditious rebellion religious extremism and royal collapse Clare Jacksons dazzling original account of English historys most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis
As an unmarried heretic with no heir Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe while her Stuart successors James I and Charles I were seen as impecunious and incompetent The traumatic civil wars regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering foreignleaning rule of Charles II and his brother James II before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed
DevilLand reveals England as in many ways a failed state endemically unstable and rocked by devastating events from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London Catastrophe nevertheless bred creativity and Jackson makes brilliant use of eyewitness accounts many penned by stupefied foreigners to dramatize her great story Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and concluding with a notso Glorious Revolution a hundred years later DevilLand is a spectacular reinterpretation of Englands vexed and enthralling past
A big historical advance Ours it turns out is a very uninsular Island Story And its 17thcentury chapter will never look quite the same again John Adamson Sunday Times
Clare Jackson 2021 P Penguin Audio 2022
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