- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins; illustrated edition edition (16 Feb 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007126573
- ISBN-13: 978-0007126576
- Product Dimensions: 22 x 16 x 4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 528,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
‘This is a wonderful book – a delight to read, fast-moving, informed and passionate in its advocacy. It is a vivid and compelling portrait of the world turned upside down, of people-power run riot, of a great city dissolving into chaos, a place where the irrational had become the norm as ordinary people responded to Lilly and Culpeper’s prophecies and prognostications.’ Roy Strong, Sunday Times
'Taking medicine as a lens on English society at a critical fulcrum between the medieval and the modern, it reveals some of the muddled half- steps by which political thought, science and the understanding of the human body have stumbled towards their modern condition. The research is superb – rich, detailed, and original – and the lives Benjamin Woolley describes are as passionate as the great events of the English Civil War around which they orbit.' Adam Nicolson
'Woolley handsomely captures a society torn between rationality and romance, cynicism and hero worship'. New Scientist
'An informative and enlightening book… immensely enjoyable, its narrative exciting and inexorable. I have not read as stimulating a study of the Elizabethan period since Charles Nicholl's book on Marlowe, The Reckoning'. Thomas Wright, Daily Telegraph
Kathryn Hughes, New Statesman
'A fascinating, brilliant account of the Renaissance world picture…'
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ostensibly this is a biography of Nicholas Culpeper, but I'm not sure this book knows what it wants to be. The author admits as much in the preface, mentioning the dearth of extant biographical material to work with which immediately negates what follows. As the story progresses one then begins to wonder whether this is a history of the English Civil War? or perhaps of the College of Physicians? or perhaps a biography of William Harvey? who features far more frequently than does Culpeper. The language was also a problem for me. The author frequently includes 17th-century prose into the body of the text instead of separating it out which makes for a turgid read with plenty of sub clauses and endless qualifications and meanderings. I'm in favour with quoting from primary sources, and even with the original spellings and grammar, but in moderation and not just for the sake of quoting - for some purpose. Apart from that it's still worth a look.
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