It's a very damning view of england at the time, and a very widely shared one. And i think, just going back to the point about we now knowtt, that is part of the problem. Even the terms we use in devil land comes from the 16 fifties, and that we now call the interregnum. So it sounds nice and safe. It's this kind of bizarre decade in which england was a republic, but it was interregnum,. The french ambassador says, the dynasty is miserable without money, without friends and without reputation. Well, thank goodness, these days, a benedicte, we deal with rather licated trade treaties and
‘Devil-Land’ – that was how foreign observers viewed England in the 17th century: a ‘failed state’ torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. The historian Clare Jackson recounts this stormy and radical era through the eyes of outsiders across the Channel. But she tells Andrew Marr that the country’s turbulence also bred great creativity and curiosity about the wider world.
The Anglo-French journalist Benedicte Paviot is the UK correspondent of France 24. She explores how the French view Britain today. From Brexit to the government’s pursuit of ‘Global Britain’ and the new Australia/UK/US defence pact, contemporary French neighbours often look on with hostility and bemusement.
Fintan O’Toole is an Irish journalist and polemicist who has spent much of his career commenting on Britain from the other side of the water. But in his latest book, We Don’t Know Ourselves, he turns his attention to Ireland since his birth in 1958. It’s another story of great turbulence and rebellion, from underdevelopment, domination by the Church and a sectarian civil war in the North, to struggles for intellectual, civil and sexual freedoms.
Producer: Katy Hickman