Jonathan Healey
Born in Leeds in 1982, Jonathan Healey is a historian of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He writes history from the bottom up, focusing on ordinary people – their lives, loves, culture and politics.He is Associate Professor in Social History at Oxford, the university from which he got his doctorate in 2008. He lives in London, and can usually be found brandishing an obscure manuscript at the National Archives.
Jonathan’s first book, The Blazing World, a history of England in the seventeenth century, will be published by Bloomsbury in the UK and Knopf in the US.
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News
Jonathan Healey’s debut
The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England 1603-1689
out now with Knopf
Books
The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England 1603-1689
The seventeenth century was a revolutionary age for the English. It started as they suddenly found themselves ruled by a Scotsman, and it ended in the shadow of an invasion by the Dutch. Under James I, England suffered terrorism and witch panics. Under his son Charles, state and society collapsed into civil war, to be followed by an army coup and regicide. For a short time—for the only time in history—England was a republic. There were bitter struggles over faith and Parliament asserted itself like never before. There were no boundaries to politics. In fiery, plague-ridden London, in coffee shops and alehouses, new ideas were forged that were angry, populist, and almost impossible for monarchs to control.
But the story of this century is less well known than it should be. Myths have grown around key figures. People may know about the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Fire of London, but the Civil War is a half-remembered mystery to many. And yet the seventeenth century has never seemed more relevant. The British constitution is once again being bent and contorted, and there is a clash of ideologies reminiscent of when Roundhead fought Cavalier.
The Blazing World is the story of this strange, twisting, fascinating century. It shows a society in sparkling detail. It was a new world of wealth, creativity, and daring curiosity, but also of greed, pugnacious arrogance, and colonial violence.
(Knopf, March 2023)