JONATHAN HEALEY is a historian of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and author The First Century of Welfare: Poverty and Poor Relief in Lancashire, 1620-1730. He is associate professor in social history at Oxford University, where he earned his doctorate in 2008. He lives in London.
The Blazing World tells the story of that crucible era when Englishmen began to think. About God and government, how to limit the monarchy and how 'the poorest he' (if not the poorest she) might share in some kind of democracy. Jonathan Healey explains Revolutionary England with great insight and wit, and an objectivity usually lacking in histories written with an inclination towards one side or the other. The book helps us to understand how and why, 400 years ago, Englishmen came to develop political and religious beliefs for which they were prepared to die and would eventually amalgamate in a way which set Britain (and, ideologically) America on a path to greatness. -Geoffrey Robertson KC, author of The Tyrannicide Brief