In lucid, often mischievous prose, Healey outlines the ideas and events that sent the state into constitutional cartwheels after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 ... Healey is excellent on the culture wars that made eyes swivel over such issues as sports on Sunday and decorations in church ... His judgments are sound and based on impressive research ... This is a wonderful book, exhaustively researched, vigorously argued and teeming with the furious joy of 17th-century life.
Healey, a professor of social history at Oxford, offers an ambitious narrative stuffed with engaging detail about the social and political developments that led to the overthrow of the Stuart monarchy, restoration, and shift to a constitutional monarchy ... Healey ably chronicles the suspenseful buildup to the shocking regicide of 1649 ... An educative history and fresh civics lesson for a new generation.
Healey’s elegant narrative provides a sure guide through the century’s labyrinthine political intrigues while analyzing deeper social dynamics that he crystallizes in dramatic scenes of hierarchies being suddenly upended ... The result is a bracing history of a time and place that created the modern world.
