Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688

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Jackson does a skilful job of delineating different alliances, tensions and conflicts, and how they contributed to political events and popular perceptions alike. Sometimes the novels chosen are new, often they are from the backlist and occasionally re-issued from way back. Since dynastic, diplomatic and economic decisions were invariably inflected by confessional choices, ‘get that wrong, and the nation would literally go to the Devil’.

During the two years spent making the BBC films, the seeds of Devil-Land’s arguments were sown when reappraising the impact of Stuart rule in locations ranging from a windswept Aberdeenshire beach that once hosted an invading Jacobite force, to Derry’s city walls, Breda’s cobbled streets, Madrid’s monumental Plaza Mayor, Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors and the Vatican City tomb of the Jacobite ‘Old Pretender’. The result is a richer picture not only of England under the Stuarts and as a republic, but also of its neighbours . She has presented a number of highly successful programmes on the Stuart dynasty for the BBC and is the author of Charles II in the Penguin Monarchs series. 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.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.

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’. It does cover the key events in passing, as it needs to, but you have to be familiar with these before reading this book. Devil-land’ Britain may have been to some, but given what was happening across the Channel in the Thirty Years’ War, and the many other wars of the 17th century, the reigns of the Stuarts, for all their failings, do not compare too badly. The negative tone of the book as a whole is heavily influenced by the fact that such judgements tended to be of the more gloomy variety.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. Their utterances are undeniably fascinating, but the individuals concerned were also highly partisan, often ill-informed and generally shaped their comments to fit a particular agenda at home.

A book to be savoured by students, history aficionados, and anyone who enjoys seeing a scholar at the top of her game diving into stories we think we know well, only to emerge with all manner of surprises. 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.Three years earlier, the English had sent shockwaves throughout Continental Europe by putting their divinely ordained king, Charles I, on trial for high treason and executing him in public. Instead the book gives a new view with which to consider England (and Scotland) under the Stuarts (and briefly during the republic led by Cromwell) through the eyes of other countries. Clare Jackson offers some acute insights on an era of failure and ferment , weaving together an impressive narrative of a time when the English seemed suddenly to have lost their minds. When populations of other countries were exhorted, between the late-1990s and 2008 ‘to be like Ireland’, O’Toole lamented that ‘our already hyped-up vision of ourselves was magnified by being reflected back at us in the admiring gaze of foreigners’.