A major new history of England’s turbulent seventeenth century and how it marked the birth of a new world
Born in Leeds in 1982, Jonathan Healey is a historian of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He writes history from the bottom up, focusing on ordinary people – their lives, loves, culture and politics. He is Associate Professor in Social History at the University of Oxford. In 2012 he was picked as one of the winners of BBC Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers Competition.
The tempo never slackens in this erudite book
*Economist*
This lively and mischievous book guides us through a dangerous
revolutionary century . . . There’s a reticence about taking on
such a complex and turbulent period, but the rewards, as The
Blazing World manifestly demonstrates, are very great
*The Times*
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
*Mail on Sunday*
[A] lively, compelling and combative study of the most dramatic and
consequential century in English history . . . The Blazing World
offers a thrilling panorama of the period, from perspectives high
and low, told with a winning combination of impish wit, sound
judgment, and serious scholarship . . . It will delight those new
to its extraordinary age, and fire up its grizzled veterans
*Telegraph*
Healey’s prose is precise but colloquial. He presents complex
arguments, but delivers them in a laid back, often jocular manner .
. . He tackles big subjects – religious dissent, the legal system –
but hitches them to piquant stories about individuals previously
unknown to history . . . Events were tumultuous, but Healey
persuasively shows us that thoughts were as thrilling and sometimes
as wild . . . Compendious and lucid
*Spectator*
An admirably even-handed account . . . For those new to the
subject, Healey’s retelling is exemplary
*Financial Times*
[An] engaging narrative of seventeenth-century Britain . . . The
nature of political legitimacy, the threats of populist frenzy, the
longing for transparent representative structures and the debates
over their limits, the power of media and the manipulation of
images in political life: as Healey indicates, these are not remote
issues. He enables us to see the deep continuities in the period,
and to understand how the arguments that dominated the seventeenth
century have had a profound and formative effect on Britain’s
democracy today
*New Statesman*
A zesty and gripping account of England’s “century of
revolution”
*Literary Review*
The Blazing World, offering a new history of revolutionary England
in the seventeenth century, illustrates how uneasily any new king
settles upon the throne . . . Healey has done extraordinary work in
synthesising those academic books on the subject . . . Courageous
and frequently engrossing . . . By tackling an enormous range of
history with vim and intelligence, Healey has provided all of us
with a lot to talk about
*Prospect*
Jonathan Healey’s book is an impressive achievement. It focuses on
the English political crises, setting them in an up-to-date social,
intellectual and cultural context. Healey’s spare but engaging
narrative is brought to life at every stage with individual
experiences . . . The reader is in safe hands, guided by a
historian who is on top of the best work on many areas of
seventeenth-century life, and who has made his own distinctive
contribution to our understanding of seventeenth-century
society
*Times Literary Supplement*
Charts th[e] extraordinary course from the Tudors to the
Hanoverians . . . Healey channels the inquiring spirit which came
to define this revolutionary age, creating his own survey as rich
and wide-ranging as the pioneering work of the seventeenth-century
characters he so admires
*The Critic*
Teems with details . . . The strength of the narrative is its
determination to range nationwide, as metropolitan affairs affected
the lives of ordinary folk in the shires; this is history told from
the bottom up. Dr Healey deals with the major historical events
with assurance and forensic insight . . . A triumph of exposition,
illuminating a blazing time of revolution in which was forged a new
world order
*Country Life*
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*
Seventeenth-century England comes thrillingly alive in Jonathan
Healey’s energetic new history . . . Healey’s book is refreshing
for its energetic writing, engaging wit and sound foundation in
recent historical scholarship . . . Rich with anecdotes and
explanations . . . Healey captures the vitality and turbulence of
17th-century England in an effective retelling, with many more
players than the typical cast of kings and queens . . . While
narrating his tempestuous past, Healey has an eye on the present .
. . This readable and informative overview evokes a lost world
which, for better or for worse, “was blazing a path toward our
own”
*New York Times*
Capturing a century such as this in one breath is not for the
faint-hearted . . . An unapologetic narrative history that draws
the focus from the Tudors and onto the fascinating Stuart age can
only help to freshen the air of current historical discourse. In
this sense, Healey’s book is blazing trails
*History Today*
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 . . . 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.
It deserves every success
*Writing Desk*
The Blazing World tells the story of that crucible era when
Englishmen began to think. About God and government, how to limit
the monarchy and how ‘the poorest he’ (if not the poorest she)
might share in some kind of democracy. Jonathan Healey explains
Revolutionary England with great insight and wit, and an
objectivity usually lacking in histories written with an
inclination towards one side or the other. The book helps us to
understand how and why, 400 years ago, Englishmen came to develop
political and religious beliefs for which they were prepared to die
and would eventually amalgamate in a way which set Britain (and,
ideologically) America on a path to greatness.
*Geoffrey Robertson KC, author of The Tyrannicide Brief*
An erudite but readable history of a remarkable century.
Contemporary voices, unearthed from the archive, convey the texture
of the times and bring events to life
*Dr Margarette Lincoln, author of London and the Seventeenth
Century*
Here a familiar and very important story is told with exceptional
clarity and vigour, and plenty of very unfamiliar anecdotes and
characters, drawn from all over the nation and all of Stuart
society
*Ronald Hutton*
The seventeenth 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, author of Providence Lost*
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