The Last Revolution: 1688 and the Creation of the Modern World

The last successful invasion of England; mobs burning Catholic chapels; one king, James, driven from his palace by night while another, William, rode in at the head of a foreign army; the events of winter 1688 were among the most dramatic in our history.

The settlement which followed would place England decisively on the path to freedom, toleration, parliamentary democracy ­and empire. Few moments have done so much to shape this country as the Glorious Revolution.

But 1688 would change England in other ways as well. This was the time of Isaac Newton's scientific breakthroughs and John Locke's philosophy; the emergence of free market ideas and the end of press censorship.

Closely researched, teeming with dramatic incident and vivid character and weaving political drama with the lives of scientists and revolutionaries, stockjobbers and refugees, The Last Revolution paints a vivid canvas of England's last great political struggle and brings to life the revolutionary world of the late seventeenth century.