At the beginning of the seventeenth century, English politics centred on the king and the royal court, ninety per cent of the population lived in the countryside and the vast majority was illiterate. Famine and plague were regular scourges.A hundred years later, a new world had arisen. Famine and plague were a thing of the past. There was a successful, embryonic welfare state, towns had been reborn as social hubs, boasting coffee houses and theatres. The new state was one that is recognisable today: regular parliaments, a national debt, a Bank of England, a cabinet government.How did this happen? In Jonathan Healey's authoritative account of the turbulent years from 1603 to 1689, the author draws on letters and diaries, legal documents and petitions, to portray the lives not just of public figures but ordinary people, too, revealing the grubby politics, the rise of a literate middle class and the immense ideological shifts that brought about the Civil Wars, Cromwell's Protectorate, religious diversity and the Restoration. From trade and an emerging empire abroad to witch trials and culture wars at home, The Blazing World is a lively and accessible history of the raw politics and huge social change of England's seventeenth century.