David Starkey on The Reformation: ISIS in action

The Oct 2nd edition of the bbc history mag podcast is very interesting. The (atheist) historian David Starkey is interviewed on the Reformation.

He says its iconoclasm was the Isis of its day and left England a land of ruins - and that it was hugely unpopular in England. It meant art especially was stopped dead for 2-300 years. He references Eamon Duffy’s excellent work studying the Reformation’s effects, but not Cobbett’s seminal work, The History of the Protestant Reformation in England & Ireland, which is a shame as the latter centres on the social impact, i.e. that the poor, infirm & elderly who had been helped and supported by the monasteries, were left with no support structure - a cataclysmic event for the lower working classes. 

The podcast was put out ahead of a new bbc2 programme by Starkey on the Reformation. It sounds fascinating.