The 17th century was one of huge political change in England. From the absolutist monarchy to republic and then back to a more constitutional monarchy, the people of England saw their daily lives changed massively. One driving force was religion but in this book Healey explains that there were so many more and that the history of these turbulent times was influenced in so many different ways.
I really enjoyed reading this book as I hadn't really studied this century in great detail and found the style educated but engaging. The source materials are really well used to illustrate points and run the panoply from royalty to the very poorest.

One of the best history book I read in some time, a book I read like a novel and made me learn a lot about XVII century and what happended in England.
I think I read more fiction than history about this age, this book was the right one to discover a historical time full of events.
Well written, easy to follow, informative
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Anyone who is slightly aware of English history will know that the seventeenth century is the century of English revolution, civil war and the death of the English monarch accused of treason. The author compares this period of devastating upheaval to where England is now: facing the birth of a new world.

The introduction explains how the seventeenth century was a bad time for everyone throughout the world, with dynasties collapsing and colonialism expanding. It was a time of turbulence with the Gunpowder Plot hoping to blow up the Houses of Parliament, religious issues and riots caused by the Puritans banning all the fun, such as football and Christmas. As if that didn't put a dampener on things, there was famine, the Great Plague, witchcraft, war with Scotland and the king being replaced with William of Orange from Holland. Oh, and the weather was very bad and taxes rose.

But what is best about this book is that there is a focus on the common people who normally don't get a shout in comparison to the leaders. Enclosure was the fencing off of common land and caused many riots as did the exporting of grain for profit, leading to many taking the grain back. These stories are relayed through individuals and there is a feel of reading a novel. With the rise of literacy more records of ordinary people were recorded and the author has researched them very well.

​This is a solid, unbiased piece of research that covers the revolutions in great detail whilst always being immensely readable. Healey notes that this was the century of change and the start of modernity that includes power, industrial, welfare and economic progress. After all this revolution England was becoming more tolerant. Maybe. A great read, accessible to all and highly recommended.

*A big thank-you to Jonathan Healey, Bloomsbury Publishing, and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
I never get tired of books on the 17th century England, and Mr Healey's offering is definitely among most readable and accessible to a general reader like myself. The twenty chapers deal with everything that, in Author's opinion, impacted the transformation of Olde England into a modern state, including science and philosophy. Some chapters read like good fiction, the one on Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society. I had no idea that foreigners were admitted among its members! I appreciated the fact that Mr Healey often started describing and eventful moment with an ordinary person, a commoner, as this is a gesture to millions of people whose names remained forgotten but who should be remembered even if they were a short-term actors on the stage.

The Blazing World is a fast paced but detailed account of the significance of the the 17th Century in English history as the country moved from the world of the last of the Tudors through regicide, civil war, restoration of the monarchy and the Glorious Revolution. At times, it read as the most exciting work of fiction. I particularly liked the way in which the author rooted the story in the life of individuals, some obscure and others well known, to show the momentous impact of national events on daily life. A really brilliant book. Thank you to the author, the publishers and to Netgalley for the opportunity to access an ARC..

This is the history of the Seventeenth century, the century that changed life for Britons from medieval to modern.
Although this a time in history that I am interested in I learnt a lot from this book.
Exceptionally well written, laid out in a way that makes meaning clear, it puts over contentious situations in an unbiased way.
Brilliant!

My thanks to the publisher for an advanced copy for honest review.

Very comprehensive and readable, gives a convincing background to the run up to the civil wars and their destructive nature, plus their context within the overall religious and social turmoil in the wider european world in the early 17th century.

I like narrative history and I like concrete examples to illustrate and amplify the broad story being told. This excellent history of seventeenth century England reads easily, with this from the introduction:
So this book is about raw politics, but it is also about the social change that conditioned those politics. It is narrative history, and for this it makes no apologies, but it’s also about how those two forces combined to create nearly a hundred years of turbulence, out of which arose a remarkable new world, one which – for better or worse – was blazing a path towards our own.
As has been said, “history is just one damn thing after another”, but I begin to understand how true this is for the English Civil War, which forms the central section of this book. Although the events cover many years, with unexpected twists and turns, Healey helped me follow the important changes, and the accidents that create historical turning points, and as importantly, when they do not.

The book is split into twenty chapters and for my own reference I have made well over a hundred notes.

There is one chapter (17) which felt out of place, perhaps because I have already read detailed histories of this period, 1665 and 1666, discussing the Dutch naval wars, the Plague and the Great Fire of London.
It also includes rather a lot about Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, which although interesting, read as though inserted to introduce a female voice. Cavendish’s achievements were considerable, including a early work of speculative/utopian fiction, The Blazing World, and being the first female inducted into the Royal Society (discussed natural philosophy, which is the contemporary description of scientific knowledge). However, Cavendish comes across as very much unique because of her social position, ahead of her time, and not part of some larger feminist movement.

To cover such a long period I am sure that Healey has had to make many choices over what to emphasise and what to omit, but for me as a lay reader, the book gives a wonderful understanding of a complex period. There are many detours that can be taken into the various Protestant religious sects (Quakers, Socinians, Muggletonians, Seekers etc) and political groups (Levellers, Diggers etc), which are mentioned sufficiently, but which don’t lose the overall narrative drive of the book. I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it to the interested reader of popular history.

I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion.