The Blazing World

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

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

Discusses with wit and provocation the upheavals of our turbulent 17th century, of which the civil wars and Glorious Revolution were but two landmarks. Obsessions among religious sects and with witchcraft complement great political struggles, and Healey tells his story through the great and powerful as well as those at the other end of society

Telegraph, The Best History Books of 2023