Clare Jackson talks to Simon Winder about her latest book, a ground-breaking portrait of the most turbulent century in English history.
The second in a season of Europe House Talks organised by the European Parliament’s office in London featuring leading writers and artists discussing issues of contemporary interest with a European focus.
Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as ‘Devil-Land’: a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. Clare Jackson’s dazzling, original account of English history’s most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis.
As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent, unable to manage their three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering, foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James II, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed.
Devil-Land reveals England as, in many ways, a ‘failed state’: endemically unstable and rocked by devastating events from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London. Catastrophe nevertheless bred creativity, and Jackson makes brilliant use of eyewitness accounts – many penned by stupefied foreigners – to dramatize her great story. 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.
Clare Jackson
After leaving Loretto School in Edinburgh, Clare graduated in History from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. She then researched an MPhil in History at Aberystwyth University, before returning to Cambridge where she completed a PhD on royalist ideas in seventeenth-century Scotland at Sidney Sussex College and became a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. After moving to Trinity Hall as Director of Studies in History, she became Senior Tutor of Trinity Hall in October 2013.
Clare’s main interests lie in early modern British political, religious, legal and cultural history. She was Editor of the Historical Journalfrom 2004 to 2011 and her biography, Charles II: The Star King was published by Penguin in March 2016. She has appeared regularly on Melvyn Bragg’s In our Time on BBC Radio 4 and presented a three-part BBC2 television series on The Stuarts in 2014 and a two-part sequel series on The Stuarts in Exile in 2015, which are regularly repeated on BBC i-player, PBS, LondonLive and other channels. Her latest book, Devil-Land: England Under Siege 1588-1688 will be published by Penguin in September 2021.
Simon Winder
British writer Simon Winder is the author of several books, including a trilogy of books on the history of Central Europe: Germania, Danubia and Lotharingia. The second book in the trilogy, Danubia, which deals with the Habsburg monarchy, was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. His books about Central Europe mix historical writing with autobiographical reflections on his travels in various countries in the region. The title of his book Germania evokes both the Roman term for the area inhabited by the Germanic peoples, and the personification of the German nation, also known as Germania. His book Lotharingia explores the culture and legacy of the historical kingdom of Lotharingia, which encompassed the present-day territory of various European countries, including France, Netherlands and Germany. Winder is a publishing director at Penguin Books.
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