The 17th century was the most dramatic and consequential in British history, the period during which the modern world was formed, and Jonathan Healey is as assured a guide to its twists and turns, its tragedies and triumphs as one could wish for. The Blazing World is a triumph of scholarship and concision.” —Paul Lay, historian, author of Providence Lost A zesty and gripping account of England’s ‘century of revolution.’” —Edward Vallance, Literary Review Even the word “ideology,” favored by Healey, may be a touch anachronistic. The American and the French Revolutions are both recognizably modern: they are built on assumptions that we still debate today, and left and right, as they were established then, are not so different from left and right today. Whatever obeisance might have been made to the Deity, they were already playing secular politics in a post-religious atmosphere. During the English Revolution, by contrast, the most passionate ideologies at stake were fanatic religious beliefs nurtured through two millennia of Christianity.

Healy] makes a convincing argument that the turbulent era qualifies as truly ‘revolutionary,’ not simply because of its cascading political upheavals, but in terms of far-reaching changes within society.... Wryly humorous and occasionally bawdy”— The Wall Street Journal Healey vividly describes all the political and social upheavals of the 1600s: from the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot of 1605, through the chaos of the civil wars, the execution of King Charles I, the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, the Restoration of the monarchy, to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It was a century of revolutions which set the stage for the modern concept of representative government. This book details many such changes in fortunes and makes clear that most modern aristocrats wouldn’t have managed to hang on to their titles over the last few centuries without the peace and stability of democracy. An irony if ever there was one.Archival issues aside, Healey’s 17th century is one comprised of incidents great and small – it is in some ways less a grand narrative than a patchwork of narratives, each one of which fascinates as it elucidates his primary theme. It is into this patchwork creation of a world turned upside down that Margaret Cavendish’s 1666 utopian fiction – the source of Healey’s title – ought to slide effortlessly. In her Blazing World, the Duchess of Newcastle describes another planet, ESFI, which contemporaries would have recognised as the Stuart kingdoms of England, Scotland, (France) and Ireland. An absolutist monarchy, ESFI remains both attached to, and an integral part of, Earth. Healey’s Blazing World, however, describes the Stuart kingdoms (primarily England) as if they existed in a vacuum until Cromwell’s rise to prominence: so detached, indeed, that Healey describes the pan-European conflict that raged from 1618-48, which was fought by Swedes, Danes, French, Dutch, Spanish, English, Scots and Irish among others, and featured a Stuart princess at its heart, as a ‘German war’. But so are people who do not fit neatly into tales of a rising merchant class and revanchist feudalists. Women, shunted to the side in earlier histories of the era, play an important role in this one. We learn of how neatly monarchy recruited misogyny, with the Royalist propaganda issuing, Rush Limbaugh style, derisive lists of the names of imaginary women radicals, more frightening because so feminine: “Agnes Anabaptist, Kate Catabaptist . . . Penelope Punk, Merald Makebate.” The title of Healey’s book is itself taken from a woman writer, Margaret Cavendish, whose astonishing tale “The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World” was a piece of visionary science fiction that summed up the dreams and disasters of the century. Healey even reports on what might be a same-sex couple among the radicals: the preacher Thomas Webbe took one John Organ for his “man-wife.” In his wide-ranging new history of revolutionary England, Jonathan Healey has given us a masterly account of a period that urgently needs to be reclaimed and recognised for its importance and interest. . . . Perhaps the greatest strength of Jonathan Healey’s book is how much it reveals of the lives and interests of those whom their contemporaries were pleased to describe as ‘the middling sort’. During the seventeenth century their voices were being raised—and heard—more vociferously and eloquently as the years went by. He is also very good on the role of women in society. . . . Painstakingly researched and elegantly written, The Blazing World is that rare achievement—a window into the past that is at once profoundly different and yet startlingly familiar.” —Dr Linda Porter, Writing Desk A sparkling account of a period that is crucial for any understanding of the history of the UK, Europe and the world beyond.” —Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

One of the many virtues of Jonathan Healey’s exciting new history of England during its most revolutionary period is the skilful way in which he thoroughly dissects the often obscure points of contention while never losing sight of the need to keep the narrative flowing. A rich and compelling account of one of the most fascinating and turbulent periods in all our history.” —Simon Griffith, Mail on Sunday The 1600's gave us so much else entertainingly and so interestingly written about by John Healey in The Blazing World. I was keen to read about the Levellers, a group so ahead of its time and its aspirations still in the 21st century a pipe dream in a country still defined by its class system and elite with the royals at the top. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

About the contributors

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. Under James I, the country suffered terrorism and witch panics. Under his son Charles, state and society collapsed into civil war, to be followed by an army coup and regicide. For a short time – for the only time in history – England was a republic. There were bitter struggles over faith and no boundaries to politics. 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. Jonathan Healey's book reveals how Britain was in a state of flux in the 17th century. Its people were still very primitive and violent with fabricated witch trials and executions commonplace. Vengeance was still in charge - Healey writes how after the monarchy was restored, Charles II had Cromwell's body dug up, his head chopped off and placed on a pike at Westminster for thirty years. It's clear that one of the reasons Britain's first republic failed do disastrously was because of the simmering religious schizophrenia at large. New Protestant England couldn't seem to work out what Protestantism it should follow. They argued about whether there should be an altar in church and where it should be, the anti Popish brigade supported execution for Catholics who believed in transubstantiation, the state even put to death its own archbishop of Canterbury. If that wasn't enough, some of the emerging peace loving Quakers found themselves being hounded and killed by the state.