About the Author

Clare Jackson is the Senior Tutor of Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. She has presented a number of highly successful programmes on the Stuart dynasty for the BBC and is the author of Charles II in the Penguin Monarchs series.

Reviews

The book is a big historical advance. Epic in scale, briskly paced and elegantly written ... Ours, it turns out, is a very un-insular "Island Story". And its 17th-century chapter will never look quite the same again.
*Sunday Times*

The story of the rise and fall of the Stuart dynasty in England, as seen through the eyes of our often confused European neighbours ... Wonderfully clear and original.
*The Times*

A bracingly revisionist view of our history in the century after the Armada ... after reading Devil-Land 'this sceptered isle' and 'demi-paradise' is unlikely to look quite the same ever again.
*New Statesman*

Jackson reappraises Stuart England in two distinctive ways ... The result is a richer picture not only of England under the Stuarts and as a republic, but also of its neighbours ... The research is impressive, the writing lucid and every page thought-provoking. It is also tremendously entertaining.
*London Review of Books*

Wonderful ... So vivid, plunges you into the chaos and the uncertainty, and inevitably has echoes of now. It reminds us that states are not inevitabilities, and that they're formed out of chaos and may go back to the conditions of their formation.
*Fintan O’Toole*

Extraordinary ... one of those perception-changing books of British history which only come along now and then, every few decades, and this is really one of the big ones.
*Andrew Marr*

A book to be savoured by students, history aficionados, and anyone who enjoys seeing a scholar at the top of her game diving into stories we think we know well, only to emerge with all manner of surprises.
*Aspects of History*

Superb ... a reminder that bitter division is not a permanent condition ... Jackson chronicles events with verve and erudition.
*Wall Street Journal*

Devil-Land eloquently retells the story of our island's most turbulent century ... England, Jackson shows, was a pariah state, feared, distrusted and ridiculed on the continent.
*Times Literary Supplement*

Clare Jackson offers some acute insights on an era of failure and ferment, weaving together an impressive narrative of a time when the English seemed suddenly to have lost their minds.
*The Times*

Fascinating. This Stuart-centred view from across the Channel of the years 1588-1688 offers a fresh, provocative and highly readable take on one of the most formative centuries of English history.
*David Reynolds, author of Island Stories: An Unconventional History of Britain*