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1603: A Turning Point in British History
by Christopher Lee
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Headline Book Publishing (2004-01-05)
ISBN: 0747234264
EAN: 9780747234265
Dewy Decimal #: 941
Paperback: 371 pages
SKU: oo5071101030
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: GUARANTEED TO BE THE SAME ITEM AND IN THE CONDITION STATED! Carefully packed and promptly shipped. Excellent customer service is our first priority.
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Editorial Reviews
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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.
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Customer Reviews
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The Subtitle Says It All
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-01-28
0 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Why is 1603, a year otherwise oddly uncelebrated among historians (those brainy bespectacled folk generally so fond of giving certain years superstar status) more deserving of its own book than say 1826 or 3340 BC? Let's see, in Britain in the year 1603, the Elizabethan Era came to its titular end with the conclusion of the old Queen's long dying, and the ill-starred Stuart dynasty entered center stage in the form of the Tudor's distant kinfolk from the north. In this same year there was also a return of the bubonic plague, the fall of Sir Walter Raleigh, the end of a war of independence in Ireland, Shakespeare was in peak form, and English piracy, um, I mean privateering, against Spain was at its profitable height.
An interesting twelve months to say the least, right? In Christopher Lee's hands (no, not THAT Christopher Lee) the year is almost made to seem that way.
I found this book very interesting in the beginning and increasingly less so as it went on. Maybe Lee placed the good stuff first, maybe I acquired an acute case of 1603-fatigue, or perhaps the first half of the year was just more noteworthy than the second, but by the last chapter I was ready to put this book behind me. I do now feel more versed in 1603 as a topic, and can't wait to launch my newfound knowledge on my peers at our next social gathering. When I turn so many heads by dropping a fact like "Did you know that due to old style calendar dating many people in 1603 thought they were actually still living in the year 1602?" I'll have none other than Mr. Lee to thank for it.
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Interesting but misguided
Rating  (1)
Date: 2006-04-15
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I found Christopher Lee's 1603 to be a somewhat of an interesting if not misguided effort to present what life and events were like back in 1603. There's a lot of information in this book which proves to be interesting but they are poorly organized and presented. The author appears to throw them in without much explanations as if he wishes to showed off his primary sources.
As the previous reviewer mentioned, there were also many childish errors in this book. Errors that a book published in 2003 should not be making because of new information that came out during the past 40 years. But what strike me the most was Chapter 17 when the author - who for some strange reason, switched over to Japanese history of 1603 and started to write about the struggles there. I don't see the relationship but what I read were host of errors and misunderstanding of Japanese history that was almost insulting to read. (For example: "Shogun Hideyoshi"?? What Japanese child of 10 would make such an error? That is like some one writing "President Elizabeth I"!!) Its pretty clear that neither the author or the editor of this book knows little about Japanese history. But that chapter alone proves to be the reflection of the book itself, sloppy, ill-written and poorly researched.
I would recommended the book After Elizabeth by Leanda de Lisle which covers the same period and does it with a more professional flair.
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As irritating as it is fascinating
Rating  (3)
Date: 2005-01-02
10 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is what the title says: A book about the year 1603. A reader who expects an in-depth explanation of the machinations surrounding the succession of Elizabeth I by James I will be disappointed. Any discussion of this interesting subject remains extremely superficial.
The strength of Lee's work is his attempt to convey to his public what it must have been to live in 1603. This is supported by long quotations from publications of the period, and these are both enlightening and amusing. His rather rambling style of writing is well suited to conveying a period atmosphere.
The big weakness is in the careless way in which the author swims through the surrounding history. At times he throws in references to people and events without bothering to explain who and what to the reader, as if he wants to show off his erudition by being impenetrable. At other times he demonstrates rather crass ignorance for a historian of the period, by messing up the titles of the Cecil family, uncritically repeating gratuitous slander about the Earl of Bothwell, or echoing tyhe schoolboy's book version of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. In a book like this, such errors cannot be excused.
The result is the written equivalent of a custome drama with an unitelligible plot. It is a series of scenes, each conveying a certain atmosphere, but not integrated together in a story. The book fails to convince the reader that is a coherent unit, and in fact it also fails to convince the reader that the author has a good understanding of his own chosen subject.
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Incoherent, garbled and convoluted
Rating  (2)
Date: 2004-08-09
8 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
Lee scatters material across the pages with little regard for the book he's writing and its title, and no thought whatsoever for the supposed structure of the book. At any point, he is likely to digress into a confused and confusing family history of a minor player in the saga for no detectable reason. Not the slightest attempt has been made to edit his rambling style or apply rules of grammar, punctuation, or consistency. The result is a book that is actually unreadable, with its only saving grace being the generous quoting of contemporary sources.
At times, Lee patronizes his readers: carefully explaining to us that mobile telephones didn't exist in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, for example, and repeatedly emphasising this sort of nonsense. At other times, he breezily assumes we possess arcane knowledge about the tangled family histories of English political dynasties that no lay reader of any nationality or background would be casually acquainted with.
Despite the powerful simplicity of its title and the seeming clarity of its purported subject, "1603" has no raison d'etre, no sense of itself or what Lee is trying to achieve. "This is not the place for a biography of James I", Lee tells us a quarter-way through, after discussing James's childhood, education and upbringing at some discursive length and before continuing through his young adulthood, marriage and accession to the English throne. What the book *is* the place for, Lee has no idea.
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Rating Based On My Limited Background
Rating (3)
Date: 2004-07-26
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
The year 1603 was a busy year in England, and author Christopher Lee has provided us with a rather in-depth account of the happenings that took place. Beginning with the death of Queen Elizabeth I which brought the rise of James VI of Scotland who became King James I of England, Lee brings the reader through other events that were taking place during this time, namely the return of the plague which reared its ugly head periodically to wipe out thousands of people, piracy on the seas, William Shakespeare and his plays, and witchcraft which already at that time was an old superstition. Almost half of the book's 356 pages deal with the death of Queen Elizabeth and the rise of King James. My background in this subject matter is negligible, so I base my rating on the interest this book had for me. I found difficulty with the diaries and notes that the author uses to quote from due to the way the people expressed themselves. If you have a better background in this subject matter than I do, you probably will enjoy the book more than I did. If your background is like mine, you may want to read it, but not purchase it.
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