Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as “Devil-Land”; a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by Rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. It was a place troubled by continual crisis.
England was seen by continental neighbours as a “failed state”; endemically unstable and rocked by devastating events from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London.
But these catastrophes also created a flowering of creativity in the arts, literature and the sciences.
In her much-acclaimed book, Devil-Land: England under Siege 1588 – 1688, Clare Jackson, Fellow of Trinity Hall and Honorary Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Cambridge, vividly brings this period to life. Here she speaks to publisher, Mike Gibbs.
