Much is exceptional about the Bayeux Tapestry currently on magnificent display in the British Museum, but nothing is quite so exceptional as the event itself. As the museum’s website reminds us, 1066 ‘was the last time England was successfully invaded’. Our sea-girt immunity from foreign invasion has been at the centre of ‘Our Island Story’ ever since, with the Channel confounding the hubris of Philip II in 1588 and 1596, of Napoleon in 1803 and of Hitler in 1940.

Only the Glorious Revolution of 1688 poses problems for this narrative of triumphant insularity. Did not Prince William of Orange – a mere stadtholder, a prime minister-cum-military commander in the service of the Dutch Republic – cross the Channel at the head of an invading army and oust the legitimate Stuart king, James II? 

Yet patriotic ingenuity, even here, has proved more than a match for historical fact – as the St Andrews-based historian Arthur der Weduwen explains in this impressive new book. The victors of 1688 were at pains to misrepresent what was in reality a Dutch invasion as an English solution to