Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688

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Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada’s descent in 1588 and concluding with a not-so ‘Glorious Revolution’ a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England’s vexed and enthralling past. But to keep ourselves on our toes, we have a rule that author gender is alternated, girl-boy-girl-boy, and the continents always rotated (with occasional glitches). Coincidentally, this Start the Week discussion occurred weeks after a new entente discordiale had been reached in Franco-British relations, following Australia’s announcement of Aukus: a new three-way strategic defence alliance with the United States and Britain that required Australia to abandon a multi-billion dollar contract to purchase French submarines. The Devil Land of the title was of course England - as it was perceived by the ambassadors and diplomats posted to England or who worked with England's representatives overseas. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

In the case of early modern England, the knife usually falls around 1603, between the flamboyance of the Tudor era and the dysfunction and disaster of the Stuarts. Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and concluding with a not-so ‘Glorious Revolution’ a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England’s vexed and enthralling past.She shows England as something of a rogue state during the Commonwealth, as well as being a potentially or actually failing state for much of the 17th century. United in condemnation they may have been, but Spanish disapproval could be far removed from Dutch criticism, and the differences in these people’s identities and political agendas is at times rather lost to sight as the litany of disasters unfolds. Clare Jackson's dazzling, original account of English history's most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis. This already confounds our expectations, but Jackson goes further, suggesting that the unifying features of this epoch were not the emergence of the modern British state and the beginning of Britain’s role on the world stage (as some might like to claim) but misadventure and calamity. It reminds us that states are not inevitabilities, and that they're formed out of chaos and may go back to the conditions of their formation.

Devil-Land ’s title derives from the nickname ‘Duyvel-Landt’, coined by an anonymous Dutch pamphleteer in 1652. Take, for example, the Spanish Jesuit whose history of England painted it as ‘a nest of vipers, a den of thieves, a ditch and cesspit of poisons and noxious vapours’.All of the Stuarts had long periods when they were not at war, when government functioned as well as governments ever do and when their subjects were able to carry on as normal, fostering trade and industry, building houses, raising families, writing plays and so forth. These may include creased cover, inscriptions or small amounts of writing, fanned edge, ripped or tatty dustjacket, and other signs of being read.

In the 1630s, a Venetian envoy was informed by his Spanish counterpart, the count of Oñate, that ‘there was no school in the world where one could learn how to negotiate with the English. As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and VI of Scotland and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent, unable to manage their three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. H istory tends not to come with serving suggestions, but it does make a lot of difference where you choose to slice it.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. Windows users should also consider upgrading to Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft Edge, or switching to Firefox or Chrome. While it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of everything going on because of the sheer number of events, this history is very illuminating and engaging. The author has mined the diplomatic correspondence adroitly and takes us to the heart of the action, as seen through the eyes of these sophisticated players. one of those perception-changing books of British history which only come along now and then, every few decades , and this is really one of the big ones.

A history of contemporary Britain written on the basis of articles in Le Monde, De Telegraaf and El País, interwoven with excerpts of what they are really saying about us in Brussels and Strasbourg, would undoubtedly be very interesting, but as a picture of events on this side of the Channel it would have its limitations. This Stuart-centred view from across the Channel of the years 1588-1688 offers a fresh, provocative and highly readable take on one of the most formative centuries of English history.Catastrophe nevertheless bred creativity, and Jackson makes brilliant use of eyewitness accounts - many penned by stupefied foreigners - to dramatize her great story.