Book details

Book description

Nothing in English history has so imprinted itself on the nation's memory as the upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century. And nothing has so divided posterity. This short book provides a crisp and lucid narrative of the complicated events of 1640 to 1660 - not just the war between King and Parliament of 1642-46 but the second civil war, the execution of King Charles I, the Commonwealth and the rule of Cromwell, and finally the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. But it also gets behind the preoccupations of later generations and explains what contemporaries on both sides thought they were fighting for and against. This wonderfully readable and well-informed account stresses the unpredictability not only of the military outcomes but also of the longer-term results. As the author notes, 'There is no better illustration of the law of unintended consequences than the English civil wars.' Blair Worden has taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Sussex and Chicago. He was Visiting Professor of Modern History at Oxford 2003-06 and is now Research Professor of History at Royal Holloway College London. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has written widely on the political, intellectual and religious history of early modern England. The Sunday Telegraph said of ROUNDHEAD REPUTATIONS: 'simply the best book on the historical writing of the English Civil War to have appeared in years.' He lives in Oxfordshire.