At the beginning of The Blazing World, a lustful merchant kidnaps the young Lady, hoping to make her marry him. As punishment, the gods blow the merchant’s ship toward the North Pole, where the Lady’s world meets “another Pole of another world.” The merchant and his crew freeze to death, but the Lady survives. She finds herself in this other world— the Blazing World—which is full of curious hybrid creatures who have the bodies of animals but walk, talk, and act like human beings. The bear-men, who live near the Blazing World’s icy North Pole, find the merchant’s ship and rescue the Lady. She is as unusual to the Blazing World’s inhabitants as they are to her, so they bring her to their Emperor, who lives in a palace in the gold-and-jewel-studded city of Paradise. The Emperor believes the Lady to be a goddess, and he graciously marries her and gives her “absolute power to rule and govern all that World as she please[s].” The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our

The book was at times slightly hard going with a lot of characters and documents popping up that weren’t re-explained, so a bit easy to get lost if you’d put it down for a while. It would have been good to have an index of characters and key laws/treaties. But I soldiered on through and got the main thrust of it.Lucy Hughes-Hallett The radicals of 17th-century England began to think the unthinkable Jonathan Healey describes how Diggers, Levellers and other revolutionary sects started proposing universal male suffrage, legal aid and even a national health service Healy] makes a convincing argument that the turbulent era qualifies as truly ‘revolutionary,’ not simply because of its cascading political upheavals, but in terms of far-reaching changes within society…. Wryly humorous and occasionally bawdy”— The Wall Street Journal As the notable Marxist historian Christopher Hill asserted, this was period of great political and intellectual excitement, a period where the old world could be transformed. And these political and religious ideas would emerge from across the social spectrum, including those usually excluded from formal politics. Likewise, the revolution opened up new vistas of political participation. Mass petitioning, lobbying and popular demonstrations would become increasingly commonplace. But the story of this century is less well known than it should be. Myths have grown around key figures. People may know about the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Fire of London, but the Civil War is a half-remembered mystery to many. And yet the seventeenth century has never seemed more relevant. The British constitution is once again being bent and contorted, and there is a clash of ideologies reminiscent of when Roundhead fought Cavalier.

David Gelber: Chancellors & Chancers - Austria Behind the Mask: Politics of a Nation since 1945 by Paul Lendvai There was birth as well as death, as this revolution “brought an extraordinary moment of ideological creativity ”. In army grandee John Lambert’s 1653 Instrument of Government , under which Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector, England had its first written constitution and one that enshrined religious toleration. There were no penalties compelling people to any particular faith, instead an exhortation that “endeavours be used to win them by sound doctrine and the example of good conversation ”.In 1698 Whitehall Palace caught fire. The vast warren of buildings, which had been central to the monarchy since the 1530s, was destroyed. When the area was eventually rebuilt, it was not kings and queens who returned but prime ministers and their governments. This topographical transformation neatly captures what historian Jonathan Healey argues was the most revolutionary change over the course of the 17th c entur y: that “politics was no longer about monarch s” . Throughout the blurred action, sharp profiles of personality do emerge. Ronald Hutton’s marvellous “ The Making of Oliver Cromwell” (Yale) sees the Revolution in convincingly personal terms, with the King and Cromwell as opposed in character as they were in political belief. Reading lives of both Charles and Cromwell, one can only recall Alice’s sound verdict on the Walrus and the Carpenter: that they were both very unpleasant characters. Charles was, the worst thing for an autocrat, both impulsive and inefficient, and incapable of seeing reality until it was literally at his throat. Cromwell was cruel, self-righteous, and bloodthirsty.