Jonathan Healey (1) (1982–)

This is gripping narrative history, well written and successfully focused on the winter of 1641/42, when Charles I, king of Britain (England, Scotland and Ireland) lost political control of the country. After a brief description of events prior to the winter, Healey provides a detailed account and explanation of matters from the viewpoint of both the Royal family and the “Junto” in Parliament’s House of Commons, slowing the narrative down to describe nearly each day’s events in show more December/January, but ratcheting up the tension, even though the outcome is known.
Very readable and highly recommended history.

You’ve just got to love a historian who can preface his book with a cast of characters (with their ages when the book starts in May 1641) and write as the last mentioned character from the House of Commons: Oliver Cromwell (42): obscure !
I have already read Healey’s The Blazing World, which describes the details the longer history of the Stuart’s and Interregnum in seventeenth century England, which was one of my favourite books of 2022. This more detailed history of a much shorter period, engagingly looks at a turning point in English history, the political moves that precipitated the start of the English Civil War.

Scotland and Ireland are both mentioned in this book, but the focus is very much on London and Westminster (still separate if adjacent cities), and England, as this is primarily political history. Healey humanises the political by following various characters, most notably John Bankes.
The book has sixteen pages of colour prints, which are usefully referenced in the text to enhance the story and in particular illustrate the printed political-ish pamphlets that were beginning to be circulated for the first time in England (a forerunner of newspapers). There are also a couple of useful maps at the beginning. show less

I like narrative history and I like concrete examples to illustrate and amplify the broad story being told. This excellent history of seventeenth century England reads easily, with this from the introduction:
So this book is about raw politics, but it is also about the social change that conditioned those politics. It is narrative history, and for this it makes no apologies, but it’s also about how those two forces combined to create nearly a hundred years of turbulence, out of which arose show more a remarkable new world, one which – for better or worse – was blazing a path towards our own.
As has been said, “history is just one damn thing after another”, but I begin to understand how true this is for the English Civil War, which forms the central section of this book. Although the events cover many years, with unexpected twists and turns, Healey helped me follow the important changes, and the accidents that create historical turning points, and as importantly, when they do not.

The book is split into twenty chapters and for my own reference I have made well over a hundred notes.

There is one chapter (17) which felt out of place, perhaps because I have already read detailed histories of this period, 1665 and 1666, discussing the Dutch naval wars, the Plague and the Great Fire of London.
It also includes rather a lot about Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, which although interesting, read as though inserted to introduce a female voice. Cavendish’s achievements were considerable, including a early work of speculative/utopian fiction, The Blazing World, and being the first female inducted into the Royal Society (discussed natural philosophy, which is the contemporary description of scientific knowledge). However, Cavendish comes across as very much unique because of her social position, ahead of her time, and not part of some larger feminist movement.

To cover such a long period I am sure that Healey has had to make many choices over what to emphasise and what to omit, but for me as a lay reader, the book gives a wonderful understanding of a complex period. There are many detours that can be taken into the various Protestant religious sects (Quakers, Socinians, Muggletonians, Seekers etc) and political groups (Levellers, Diggers etc), which are mentioned sufficiently, but which don’t lose the overall narrative drive of the book. I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it to the interested reader of popular history.

I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion. show less

Nobody expects civil war. Looking back, as Jonathan Healey does in this exciting account of the events that broke this nation 383 years ago, it is easy to see what is coming. Plots and counterplots, small conspiracies and big rumours, bad actors and impractical idealists crowd the stage of history and, from 2025, it all points in one direction. But it is unlikely that anybody got up on any morning in the first half of 1642 and said to themselves: that’s it, we are at war.

After all, Charles show more I had attempted the personal rule – the rule of the king without Parliament – from March 1629, and it seemed to be going well. To be sure, not everybody was happy about the new taxes, but when did taxes ever make people happy? True, not everybody was happy, either, with the new initiatives to restore the beauty of holiness – for many, altarcloths and statues were not beautiful, but suspicious signs of Catholic allegiance – but they were almost certain to get used to the idea. A few court masques would reassure any dissident nobles, and Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, was at hand to resolve any local difficulties with the Scots and Irish. In Ireland, Strafford’s rule was a mix of iron fist and conciliation; he had to maintain relations between the many different interest groups – Presbyterian Scottish settlers, the old Irish gentry, and the Gaelic-speaking common people – while also repressing any direct rebellious energy. Charles never really liked him. Nobody else liked him very much either, particularly after he had forced the Protestants in Ulster to renounce the Scottish Covenant, an oath taken to reject Charles’ ecclesiastical reforms. Cornered and increasingly sick, he made a series of disastrous mistakes – stealing the title of baron of Raby from another key member of the Privy Council, Sir Henry Vane, and raising an Irish army that contained Catholics to repress the Scots – and so ‘Black Tom Tyrant’, as the press called him, became that standard target of rebellious energy, the king’s bad counsellor.

If the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, that vigilance started in England with a certain strand of English Protestantism, which had been on red alert since Strafford’s elevation, and probably on amber alert throughout the 1630s. Protestantism defined itself above all as the power to repel Catholic repression, and that definition, strengthened by the London press, animated all those concerned about the legitimacy of Charles’ actions, a group that eventually formed something like a nascent political party known to historians as the Junto.

Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/blood-winter-jonathan-healey-review

Diane Purkiss show less

My first thought when I finished this book was, wow! That was an awful lot of stuff to happen in just five months, but it was explained in a way that made it easy to read, other than having a lot of people involved to try to keep straight. People were in with the King one minute, then out, then back in again, over and over and over. It was crazy how things transpired during those months that led up to the English Civil War when you think about it. Just changing one decision could have show more altered history, which blows my mind. I don't know if you do this, but I keep wanting people to make different choices, even though I'm not delusional and I know that this being nonfiction, that's not going to happen. Lol

This book was well written, which made following the action and understanding the sequence of events easier than it would have been with a lesser writer. As a history buff, this was the perfect book for me, and if you love history, too, I happily recommend it.

5/5 stars

*** Thank you NetGalley, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor, and Jonathan Healey for the opportunity to read and review The Blood in Winter. show less