‘Clare Jackson’s dazzling portrait of James plunges us not only into his extraordinary political career but into his mental universe… Splendidly erudite and wonderfully vivid in its detail and insights, The Mirror of Great Britain enriches our understanding both of James’s times and of our own’ – Fintan O’Toole, New York Times best-selling author of We Don’t Know Ourselves

‘Beautifully written and supported by a treasure trove of new material, The Mirror of Great Britain is a profound meditation on the meaning of identity and the fragility of kingship’ –Amanda Foreman, New York Times best-selling author of The Duchess, Georgiana, and A World on Fire

James VI & I, who died 400 years ago, was one of Britain’s most consequential and interesting monarchs, not least in creating the British monarchy itself by joining the English and Scottish thrones. A major intellectual, James’s preoccupations ranged from witchcraft and theological controversy to hunting, diplomacy, poetry and sartorial fashion. The ‘Mirror of Great Britain’ was a spectacular jewel that gave symbolic endorsement to James’s vision of British union, but mirrors themselves – with their limitless capacity to magnify, illuminate and distort – supplied James with one of his favourite literary metaphors.

Ruler of Scotland for nearly four decades before his accession to the English throne in 1603, James was a ‘cradle king’ whose long reigns encompassed extraordinary dramas, including his abduction in the ‘Ruthven Raid’ in 1582 and his attempted assassination in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. In his lifetime, James often confounded contemporaries’ expectations while his posthumous reputation has been distorted by crude stereotypes.
Closely attentive to James’s own words – in numerous publications, manuscript musings, topical verse and private correspondence – Clare Jackson’s wonderful new book tells the story of this highly unusual monarch with great flair and insight.

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. 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 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.

‘A big historical advance. Ours, it turns out, is a very un-insular “Island Story”. And its 17th-century chapter will never look quite the same again’ John Adamson, Sunday Times

A ground-breaking portrait of the most turbulent century in English history

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.

Charles II has always been one of the most instantly recognisable British kings – both in his physical appearance, disseminated through endless portraits, prints and pub signs, and in his complicated mix of lasciviousness, cynicism and luxury. His father's execution and his own many years of exile made him a guarded, curious, unusually self-conscious ruler. He lived through some of the most striking events in the national history – from the Civil Wars to the Great Plague, from the Fire of London to the wars with the Dutch.

Clare Jackson's marvellous book takes full advantage of its irrepressible subject.