Prince William of Orange was 14 and his bride, Princess Mary, was nine, when this wedding portrait was painted by van Dyck.
It appears in Lisa Jardine's book Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory, which examines how William was able to return to England more than 20 years later with 20,000 men in a bloodless coup which forced James II to abdicate.
Jardine looks at how Dutch influence had already reshaped Britan's cultural life before the Glorious Revolution, bringing the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, so that William and Mary's takeover was somehow not seen as an invasion. Jardine wears her learning lightly and is not afraid to refer to present-day politics in her argument that the 'Dutchification' of Britain was, on the whole, a good thing.
All in all, the book provides a magnificent, imaginative recasting of the expression 'Going Dutch'.
Lisa Jardine will be at the Oxford Literary Festival next Friday.
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