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. John Adamson Sunday Times
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.