Customer Reviews

1603: The Death of Queen Elizabeth I, the Return of the Black Plague, the Rise of Shakespeare, Piracy, Witchcraft, and the Birth of the Stuart Era

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

Popular history dedicated to a single year often proves a very successful approach. It allows the author to make complementary explorations of developments in various areas, be those geographies, cultures, and/or ideas. (John Wills' "1688: A Global History" was a particularly successful example of the genre.) Christopher Lee's book about 1603 - limited mostly to Great Britain - is not so successful.

The audience for this book will be largely those already familiar with British history, geography, and current idiom. I thought I had a reasonably good grasp of the genealogy of the British kings and queens leading up to 1603; my grasp loosened considerably after reading Lee's attempt to clarify the lineages. My alienation was reinforced by the frequency of phrases such as "as we know" and "of course" when the author deals with facts that non-British readers are unlikely to know or to treat as a matter of course. ("Lady Jane Grey ... was, of course, Warwick's own daughter-in-law.") And isn't the author overly fond of the rhetorical question? (Examples abound, such as: "The Jesuits?" and "What of James in all this?")

Lee's main organizing principle is that of proving that 1603 was an important year in history. Although he cites one historian with an opposing view, the question strikes me as neither controversial nor deep. And without that, the text, like the subtitle, proves to be just a stringing together of topics. Some of these topics are compelling, but too many aren't. A chapter on piracy works. One on King James' coronation is interminably dull.

There are numerous historical nuggets and oddities to be mined here. But the excavation effort proved too strenuous for this reader.

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.

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.

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.

1603 covers a fascinating and momentous year in British history. It was the year that the great Queen Elizabeth I died, and James V of Scotland, travelled to London to claim the throne as King James I, effectively uniting England with Scotland by bringing them under the rule of a single monarch.

As King of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (at that time the kings of England still referred to themselves as kings of France).
He was the first monarch to describe himself as King of Great Britain.

In that year a terrible plague broke out in England, killing around 40 000 people. Treatises and pamphlets were drawn up on the plague, giving us an important insight into the practise and philosophy of medicine at this time.

There was a massive outbreaking of witch-burning that year, in a superstitious age, and the author describes the beliefs and practises regarding witchcraft and the penalties it incurred.
The author documents the case of the trial of the trial of Elizabeth Jackson for allegedly bewitching a young girl by the name of Elizabeth Glover.

Lee covers the politics and economics of that year, detailing the philosophy of the divine right of kings which King James fervently believed in.
The theologian so the time who believed in this doctrine, it must be said strongly qualified it with the condition that the king must rule according to the laws of G-D and man. Thus even the rule of absolute monarchs at this time was far more limited than those of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th and 21st centuries where everything go's to 'defend the revolution'.

Few aspects of life in Britain that year are left out of this volume, including farming and trade.
The author begins with a chapter on the history of England and Scotland and of the royal dynasties leading up to 1603. He concludes with chapters on piracy, the East India Company and a fascinating chapter on Japan, visited for several years from 1600 by English explorer William Adams.

What a refreshing style of writting. This is a great biography of the time and doesn't get boring. Will definetly look for this author in the future

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.