The Stuart monarchs reigned during a time when Britain was balanced on the brink of change. It was an era torn between absolute monarchy and revolution: kings ruled with iron fists only to be toppled by opponents who laid claim, not to a crown, but to a country. It was an era that saw the carnage of the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I and the rise of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth, only to then witness Charles II’s restoration, the Great Plague and the Glorious Revolution.

In this fascinating, day-by-day account of life in Stuart Britain, diarists such as the famous Samuel Pepys and the gardener John Evelyn brush shoulders with well-known poets and anonymous writers of household records. They describe events from the Great Fire of London and the fall of two kings, to the coronation of Britain’s only dual monarchs and the uniting of the English and Scottish crowns.