A Ship ‘for which Great Neptune Raves’: The Sovereign of the Seas, la Couronne and Seventeenth-Century International Competition over Warship Design

Charles I’s great warship the Sovereign of the Seas is famed for its design, decoration and importance as a tool that heightened the image of English naval supremacy. By exploring its career, size, name and decoration, this article highlights the Sovereign of the Seas’ significance as a national symbol of political and cultural power. It argues that Charles’s leading warship was developed as a reaction to naval advances and current affairs in Europe. Through a diverse range of evidence including diplomatic correspondence, printed texts and artwork from both English and French institutions, as well as relating this to similar advances in the Netherlands and Sweden, the Sovereign of the Seas’ development is internationally contextualized. By comparing it with other contemporary warships, most importantly la Couronne of France, it is shown that Charles’s flagship was a product of a growing international theatre of maritime activity that was inspired by cultural and political competition, as much as it was by military escalation

Towards a critically informed mindful therapy

I am very grateful to the editors for inviting me to provide a response to this important special issue critically examining the current popularity of mindfulness in counselling and psychotherapy. After the explosion of interest which has occurred over the last couple of decades, many key writers in this field have suggested that the time has come to pause and to attend to where we are with mindfulness (Williams & Kabat-Zinn, 2011). Several authors in the current volume argue that, beyond pausing and attending to where we are, being mindful also requires critical reflection in order to gain a greater insight into what has brought us to where we are, as well as a commitment to moving forward from this point with wisdom and compassion. Therefore I hope, in this response, to offer some brief observations on the current state of mindful therapy, and to draw together the critical points which have been raised throughout this volume in order to consider where we might go next. I invite the reader to reflect, themselves, upon which aspects of this special issue have resonated most with them, and to ask - alongside me - what our therapeutic practice might look like if it was informed by these critical engagements with mindfulness