Among foreign observers, 17th century England was known as Devil Land, a land of diabolic

king killers, a failed state, a place of religious extremism and seditious rebellion, which

is to say that looking from the perspective of foreigners offers a brand new way to see

the Stuart century.

This new way in is the brainchild of Dr Claire Jackson, senior tutor at Trinity College

Cambridge, who joins me to talk about her research for her book of the same name, Devil Land,

England under siege 1588 to 1688.

This is a tale of dynasties and diplomacy, the grand sweep of political history from

the Spanish Armada to the glorious revolution.

Dr Jackson, I am delighted to welcome you to not just the tutors, and this is very much

not just the tutors. Today we are moving on from the tutors, but starting with them.

In fact, the first thing I want to say is that I love the fact that in this book you have

kind of challenged conventional ideas of periodization the tutors and then the Stuart's.

I am so struck by the fact that whenever I've taught a period that sort of overlaps the two

centuries as it were, you can see the cost of historians changing at 1603.

And so the fact that you've done this, that you've conceived of the importance of this

overlapping century, bounded at one end by an unsuccessful foreign invasion, the other

by an invitation to a foreigner to invade, I think is fascinating. What gave you the idea?

Well, thank you very much for having me. There is a very neat parallel between 1588 and

unsuccessful seaborn invasion and 1688, a successful seaborn invasion. And contemporaries drew

a lot of significance in that century. They wanted to sort of see some providential tale that the

Catholic Armada had been defeated, but the Protestant Armada was successful. It was helped as well by

...