In this book, Lisa Jardine assembles new research in political and social history, together with the histories of art, music, gardening and science, to show how Dutch tolerance, resourcefulness and commercial acumen had effectively conquered Britain long before William of Orange and his English wife arrived to rule in London. This is the remarkable story of the relationship between two of Europe's most important colonial powers at the dawn of the modern age. Jardine demonstrates how individuals such as Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton and successive generations of the remarkable Huygens family, usually represented as isolated geniuses working in the enclosed environment of the country of their birth, in fact developed their ideas within a context of easy Anglo-Dutch relations that laid the vital groundwork for the European Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.--From publisher description.