From Amazon
1603 was the year that saw the death of Queen Elizabeth I and the accession of King James I. Marking the 400th anniversary of this momentous year, Christopher Lee's
1603: A Turning Point in British History tells the story, embracing kings and queens as well as the ordinary people who made up the nation at this period.
Lee's story centres on the passing of the Tudor dynasty with the death of Elizabeth, and the rise of "the often cataclysmic time of the Stuarts" in the figure of King James. Lee captures the decline and fall of the mortally ill Elizabeth, as she "hung on for grim death", while her old and tired courtiers jockeyed for political position, "a gallery of intellectual and political authority tiptoeing through the last and fading moments of Tudor history", prior to the arrival of the ambitious, bookish new Stuart King, James I.
1603 then explores the changes wrought by the new Scottish king--his attempt to unify Scotland and England, plans for a new bible, the reformation of the constitution, and the problem of what to do with Elizabeth's old favourite, Walter Raleigh. Lee concludes: "It was a trying time to become a monarch," before moving on to more popular concerns that defined 1603--witchcraft, Ireland, piracy, and religious matters. This was also a year when "the riches of India were coming back to England" and the East India Company had just begun to trade. It was also "a rich year for theatre and prose", although with surprisingly little discussion of Shakespeare.
1603 is a rich, broad survey of one year in England's history, but Lee is hampered by the fact that beyond the change in royal rule, there is little to specifically define the year, which means the book does drift into episodic stories of events from the year that don't necessarily sustain the reader's interest. --Jerry Brotton
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Lee, author of This Sceptred Isle, a history of Britain that accompanied a BBC radio series, focuses in on one turning point in that saga. In 1603 the Elizabethan era ended with the last Tudor monarch's death, and the Stuart dynasty began with the coronation of James I (formerly James VI of Scotland). Lee gives the political background by skillfully summarizing the past intrigues of the Tudor era. Drawing on chronicles, diaries and letters, Lee paints a lively picture of the society that the new king inherited. A condensed biography of James (the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots) details his birth, his mother's political intrigues and execution, and his schooling and marriage. A meandering middle section describes James's uncertain procession south from Scotland to his coronation in London. Vivid snapshots of the plague and of witch-hunting, a dense account of the demise of Walter Raleigh, an outline of London's theater world, a glimpse of Irish revolt and tales of early empire-building voyages make absorbing reading. Yet Lee struggles to define the year's significance beyond mere regime change. He is analytic when discussing endemic government corruption, the nation's uneasy religious mood, the creation of the King James Bible and James's clampdown on the lucrative piracy industry, but these analyses never gel into an overall thesis. Yet in its rich texture and detail, 1603 will surely whet the appetite of readers interested in 17th-century English history. 8 pages of b&w photos.
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Review
The author of This Sceptr'd Isle focuses on a crucial year in English history, 1603, the year that Queen Elizabeth I died and the monarchy passed from the Tudors to the Stuarts - from the house of Henry VIII to James VI of Scotland who ruled as James I of England. It was also the year the Black Death returned, killing some 30,000 out of a population of four million. This is the story of the history makers - Elizabeth, James, Robert Cecil, Shakespeare, Galileo - and of the common people; of turmoil in the Church, State-sponsored piracy and the establishment of new trade routes. Lee's work always finds a ready audience, and his trademark accessibility is well to the fore here.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
Book Description
1603 was the year that Queen Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, died. Her cousin, Robert Carey, immediately rode like a demon to Scotland to take the news to James VI. The cataclysmic time of the Stuarts had come and the son of Mary Queen of Scots left Edinburgh for London to claim his throne as James I of England.
Diaries and notes written in 1603 describe how a resurgence of the plague killed nearly 40,000 people. Priests blamed the sins of the people for the pestilence, witches were strangled and burned and plotters strung up on gate tops. But not all was gloom and violence. From a ship's log we learn of the first precious cargoes of pepper arriving from the East Indies after the establishment of a new spice route; Sharkespeare was finishing Othello and Ben Jonson wrote furiously to please a nation thirsting for entertainment.
1603 was one of the most important and interesting years in British history. Christopher Lee, acclaimed author of This Sceptred Isle, unfolds its story from first-hand accounts and original documents to mirror the seminal year in which Britain moved from Tudor medievalism towards the wars, republicanism and regicide that lay ahead.
About the Author
Christopher Lee studied history at Cambridge and subsequently became BBC defense correspondent. He is the author of the acclaimed BBC series This Sceptered Isle and has edited Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples from the original four volumes into a single book .
