Drawing on vast archives, Jonathan Healey refreshes our understanding of public figures while simultaneously taking us into the lives of ordinary people to illuminate a revolutionary society that forged a new world. The British constitution is once again being contested, and we face a culture war reminiscent of when the Roundheads fought the Cavaliers.įrom raw politics to religious divisions, civil wars to witch trials, plague to press freedoms, The Blazing World is the story of a strange but fascinating century, told in sparkling detail. Yet the seventeenth century has never been more relevant. Leaders like Oliver Cromwell, Charles II, and William of Orange have been reduced to caricatures, while major turning points like the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution have become shrouded in myth and misunderstanding. It offers an exhilarating reading experience for anyone willing to meet its challenge. In the coffee shops and alehouses of plague-ridden London, new ideas were forged that were angry, populist and almost impossible for monarchs to control.ĭespite the radical changes that transformed England, few today understand the story of this revolutionary age. The Blazing World is a serious, sometimes profound book, tackling head-on the knotty issues of identity and sense of self, and our unconscious ideas about gender and celebrity. There were bitter struggles over faith and no boundaries to politics. For a short time - for the only time in history - England was a republic. Under his son Charles, state and society collapsed into civil war, to be followed by an army coup and regicide. Under James I, the country suffered terrorism and witch panics. The seventeenth century began as the English suddenly found themselves ruled by a Scotsman, and ended in the shadow of an invasion by the Dutch.

'A brilliant, bloody account of England's most dramatic century. 'This is a wonderful book, exhaustively researched, vigorously argued and teeming with the furious joy of seventeenth-century life' The Times A major new history of England's turbulent seventeenth century and how it marked the birth of a new world

The blazing world book