Lives Of The Stuart Age

Introduces the history of Stuart England. Suggested level: senior secondary.

A major undertaking in its own right, this Second Edition of The Stuart Age (revised throughout, and reset in a more generous format) is fully worthy of the immensely successful First Edition. It provides clear and accessible interpretations of the many changes that took place in these crowded years -- still the centre of the most lively and intellectually exciting debates of any period of British history -- but its aim is not to persuade readers to accept these interpretations uncritically, but to help them take part in the ongoing debate themselves.

In this extraordinary book, Alexander Masters has created a moving portrait of a troubled man, an unlikely friendship, and a desperate world few ever see. A gripping who-done-it journey back in time, it begins with Masters meeting a drunken Stuart lying on a sidewalk in Cambridge, England, and leads through layers of hell…back through crimes and misdemeanors, prison and homelessness, suicide attempts, violence, drugs, juvenile halls and special schools–to expose the smiling, gregarious thirteen-year-old boy who was Stuart before his long, sprawling, dangerous fall. Shocking, inspiring, and hilarious by turns, Stuart: A Life Backwards is a writer’s quest to give voice to a man who, beneath his forbidding exterior, has a message for us all: that every life–even the most chaotic and disreputable–is a story worthy of being told.

Here is an invaluable, user-friendly and compact compendium packed with facts and figures on the seventeenth century – one of the most tumultuous and complex periods in British history. From James I to Queen Anne, this Companion includes detailed information on political, religious and cultural developments as well as military activity, foreign affairs and colonial expansion. Chronologies, biographies, documents, maps and genealogies, and an extensive bibliography navigate the reader through this fascinating and formative epoch as the book details the key events and themes of the era including: the English Civil War and its military campaigns the Gunpowder Plot, Catholic persecution and the influence of Puritanism imperial adventures in America, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean Scotland and the Act of Union, 1707 the Irish Confederate wars and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland the Great Fire of 1666 and the rebuilding of London biographies of key figures, including women, artists, architects, writers and scientists the Restoration and the revival of drama. With complete lists of offices of state, an extensive glossary of key constitutional, political and religious terminology, and up-to-date thematic annotated bibliographies to aid further research, this student-friendly reference guide is essential for all those interested in the Stuart Age.

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, John Morrill's Very Short Introduction to Stuart Britain shows how in the Stuart century, a century of Revolution, political, religious, social, and economic changes came together.