Product Description

A great step-change in British history took place in 1603: the year that 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 only 4 million. This is the story of both 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #986065 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-24
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
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

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.

About the Author
Christopher Lee studied history at Cambridge University and subsequently joined the BBC where he became defence correspondent. He is the author of the highly acclaimed BBC Radio series 'This Sceptred Isle' and has edited Churchill's HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLES from the original four volumes to a single book.

Customer Reviews

Not well enough focussed
The idea is good ... tell us about the year 1603 when the Tudors gave way to the Stuarts .... the problem is that the author is not sure where to aim the book - how much knowledge can he assume that the reader has of the events both before and after this date ? In the end the author errs on the side of too much information and the year 1603 doesn't become the focus of the book. Although interesting I felt that the information was presented in a somewhat haphazard manner and didn't seem to follow a plan and that it would have benefitted from having been better sorted and presented. The inclusion of large amounts of source material does also become tedious after a while.

I don't want to seem all negative because it is an interesting read and very informative but it seems like a wasted opportunity for what could have been a far better book.

1603...And All That.....
Lee has chosen to take 1603 as a great turning point in British history, akin to 1066. There is no argument that the death of Elizabeth I and the accession of James I and VI, bringing England and Scotland under one monarch, did entail a change for Great Britain - most obviously civil war and eventual unification.

Although Lee has written an interesting book, it is a little choppy in places, and 1603 doesn't seem to provide enough material in itself, there being no great focus, such as the battle of Hastings is for 1066. The books spends a lot of time looking both backwards and forwards, which is OK, but not really what the book was supposed to be about.

Lee also has some interesting spellings of proper nouns: Arbella Stuart becomes Arabella, we have the Earl of Lenox, rather than Lennox and Sir Walter Ralegh, rather than Raleigh. I found this a bit odd.

There are plenty of extracts from original documents included. It is very interesting to see these in the original English they were written in, although the number of extracts does at times make it heavy going and perhaps not for the casual reader.

Rather unfocussed
A mostly thematical look at the changes occuring in Britain around this time. I think I would have preferred it if had adopted a slightly more chronological and journal-type approach going throughout the year, as I felt it bounced around a bit between rather unconnected topics. It was also a little dry in places, with sometimes overlong extracts from contemporary sources which could have benefited from being translated into slightly more modern English for ease of reading (this is after all history, not literature).