"The sharpest feature of this book is that it takes poetry, pictures, and architecture seriously by seeing these as major items of historical testimony. . . . An engaging and sensitive study."-American Historical Review
"Smuts's great strength is his grasp of the politics of the age. . . . At every point he is able to buttress his arguments about Charles I's 'cultural policy' by reference to Charles's social, economic, and foreign policy."-Journal of Modern History
"The book's virtues are numerous. Smuts, a historian, has read widely, pulling together much valuable information while offering intelligent insights of his own. . . . Particularly valuable is the book's emphasis on the social and factional complexity of the court and thus of the art it produced and consumed."-Sixteenth Century Journal
"Smuts's book deserves a wide readership. Provocative in the best sense of the word, it challenges the reader at every turn and offers a running commentary on possibilities for future research."-Journal of British Studies
