Charles I at his absolutist worst
The months preceding the outbreak of civil war saw distrust of the King become widespread and a ‘new temper’ take hold
Friends fall out in the English civil war
Bulstrode Whitelocke and Edward Hyde, close colleagues in the 1630s, find themselves on opposite sides in the bitter conflict a decade later
Why were the security services so obsessed with the Marxist historian Christopher Hill?
MI5 and Special Branch intercepted Hill’s mail for decades, but the former Master of Balliol was an impartial teacher and certainly no Soviet agent
The flowering of enlightenment under Oliver Cromwell
Far from being a puritanical wasteland, revolutionary Britain saw the foundation of the Oxford Circle, a group of philosophers and scientists who bridged the political divide of the times
How weird was Oliver Cromwell?
The pious people’s champion was not only a sadist and ruthless self-promoter; he could also indulge in infantile horseplay during the pressurised period leading up to the regicide
Disgusted of academia: a university lecturer bewails his lot
The anonymous professor rails against politicians, administrators, colleagues and students who consistently fall short of his ethical and intellectual standards
Communing with an ancestor
Ian Marchant, diagnosed with cancer in 2020, takes comfort from his ancestor’s diary (1714-28), recording a full life as farmer and mainstay of his parish
Nasty, brutish and short
As Tory writers reflected on the safe passage of the Stuart dynasty through the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-81, an anonymous…
Desperate fools
Almost half of the terrorists hadn’t even turned up. Still, on the night of 23 February 1820, 25 men, including…
Fears of popery
Stuart England did not do its anti-Catholicism by halves. In the late 1670s and early 1680s, a popular feature of…
Bellicose but comradely
One of the first retrospective accounts of Oliver Cromwell’s early career, Andrew Marvell’s ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from…
The power of the pamphlet
Researching the seditious literature of earlier periods is seldom suspenseful, pulse-quickening work. For every thrill of archival discovery, there are…
The real villain of the House of York was Richard III’s elder brother
Trying to describe the outcome of the Wars of the Roses — the fall of the House of York —…
Diarmaid MacCulloch delves deep into the soul of Thomas Cromwell – administrator, henchman and evangelical
The final moments of Hilary Mantel’s magnificent Wolf Hall see its central protagonist, Thomas Cromwell, trying to banish ghosts. Assailed…
Milton’s blinding reading list
In December 1996 Martin Amis told listeners of the BBC’s Desert Island Discs what would relieve his solitude were he…
Restoration man
Given that he wrote and published some of the most stunningly handsome books of the 17th century, John Ogilby has…
One scorching summer long ago
It was the brightest of futures; it was the End of Days. Three hundred and fifty years before Brexit, England…
