To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Given the scope of the subject matter, there was a lot to fit into circa 500 pages, but there is a good balance between depth of coverage and narrative pace.

Since dynastic, diplomatic and economic decisions were invariably inflected by confessional choices, ‘get that wrong, and the nation would literally go to the Devil’. Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada's descent in 1588 and concluding with a not-so 'Glorious Revolution' a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England's vexed and enthralling past. If foreign observers found 17th-century Britain infuriating, ‘its political infrastructure weak, its inhabitants capricious and its intentions impossible to fathom’, it was at least in part because they did not really know what they were talking about. Often this period is portrayed as being a conflict between catholic and protestant, but there was more than one way to be a protestant, and differing views on the shape of the reformation could also lead to conflict. In the 1630s, a Venetian envoy was informed by his Spanish counterpart, the count of Oñate, that ‘there was no school in the world where one could learn how to negotiate with the English.

Foreign-policy pundits, then as now, tended to lack subtlety, even if they could be highly articulate about a nation they did not like very much. The Devil Land of the title was of course England - as it was perceived by the ambassadors and diplomats posted to England or who worked with England's representatives overseas. Windows users should also consider upgrading to Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft Edge, or switching to Firefox or Chrome.

A history of contemporary Britain written on the basis of articles in Le Monde, De Telegraaf and El País, interwoven with excerpts of what they are really saying about us in Brussels and Strasbourg, would undoubtedly be very interesting, but as a picture of events on this side of the Channel it would have its limitations. Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada’s descent in 1588 and concluding with a not-so ‘Glorious Revolution’ a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England’s vexed and enthralling past. Notice to Internet Explorer users Server security: Please note Internet Explorer users with versions 9 and 10 now need to enable TLS 1. As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent. She shows England as something of a rogue state during the Commonwealth, as well as being a potentially or actually failing state for much of the 17th century.

It is a history of England so Scotland remains a foreign player in spite of the fact it shared a monarch after 1603.