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Keay has chosen to narrate the story of this period through mini biographies of individuals: some are 'big' political or cultural figures (Monke, Cromwell, Petty), others more obscure (Anna Trapnell) and their lives intercept at times which means that the chronology can get messy if, like me, you're looking for a historical overview of the period. For me, this book feels, at times, bitty and fragmented and I'd have benefited from more dots being joined. Some chapters almost feel like mini essays on, say, the Diggers and Levellers and other religious sects. I was totally gripped by this account of a period I knew only in terms of dates and Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell does of course have a significant role in events, but there are others whose contributions and decisions ultimately drove the fate of the short-lived republic. Keay shows the wide range of religious and political views in the population, preventing any consensus on what the new Parliament and government should be, and makes clear how actions in Ireland and Scotland changed the course of history for those countries over the following centuries. Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector. I haven’t read a biography, so the two chapters about Cromwell’s rejection of the crown and duality between his country gentleman upbringing and epiphany of radical religious convictions were succinct but enlightening. Anna Keay brings to life the warm, courageous and handsome Duke of Monmouth, a man who by his own admission ‘lived a very dissolute and irregular life’, but who was ultimately prepared to risk everything for honour and justice. His life, culminating in his fateful invasion, provides a sweeping history of the turbulent decades in which England as we know it was forged. Unlike other histories of the 1650s, this book does not centre around Cromwell himself, although he is prominent in the second half, and, notwithstanding the enormity of Cromwell the statesman, it is his family and personal life that are particularly fascinating. The reader is left with an intriguing question: had it been Henry Cromwell, rather than his elder brother Richard, who succeeded his father as Lord Protector in 1658, would the Republic have survived?
Discovering the stories of a religious group wanting to return to the land, a grand lady on the losing side holding onto her lands and titles, a newspaper man who feels so modern, and finding out a man who we should all know along side the name Cromwell.I found this book fascinating, although it also evoked a certain feeling of shame about how woefully ignorant I had previously been about the period referred to as ‘The Commonwealth, following the execution of Charles I, and preceding the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. In fact, I believe that most of my understanding of the role of Oliver Cromwell stems from the somewhat anodyne source of the Ladybird book about him that I was given as a very young child.
Marchamont Nedham, a journalist of the Royalist publication Mercurius Pragmaticus, who when imprisoned for his writings by the Republic, accepted the job of public relations for Parliament, publishing Mercurius Politicus. He became the first famous political journalist. This covers the period up to Cromwell’s military coup of Parliament in April 1653. an exceptional book about an exceptional time… Keay brilliantly conveys what it was like to live amid the contrasts and contradictions, the heady optimism and the bleak despair, of that tumultuous age … A triumph. It is hard to imagine a better introduction to the volatile world of the 1650s’ John Adamson, author of The Noble Revolt The execution of King Charles I in January 1649 and the subsequent abolition of the monarchy turned Britain into a republic, which it would remain until the Restoration of Charles II 11 years later. Yet it is a period of British history that so often exists only in the shadows, occasionally as little more than a footnote to the Civil Wars of the previous decade. This is necessarily quite a broad brush view which focuses primarily on domestic political change - military conflicts and foreign affairs are dealt with briefly and only in so far as they touch the main narrative - but this serves to give a vivid and colourful view of an unusual decade. The biographical approach was underpinned by a chronological progression through the Interregnum so that characters we met early on reappeared in later chapters, and this worked well to make it clear how events unfolded and affected others. I also enjoyed reading about the turncoat ‘journalist’ Marchamont Nedham. The 17th Century marked the onset of the periodical, with forerunners of modern newspaper being printed and distributed throughout the capital. Having previously been an ardent advocate of the Royalist cause, to the extent that he was imprisoned by the Commonwealth, Nedham reinvented himself as the regime’s PR mouthpiece, in which guise he published the Mercurius Politicus, and essentially invented the concept of political journalism.This remarkably well researched and beautifully written book takes the reader to the very heart of that extraordinary period of British history: Cromwell’s Commonwealth. The swirling maelstrom of ideas in the late 1640s and the 1650s – when Britons were trying to work out how a modern country might work with an entirely new constitution shorn of a monarch and a House of Lords – is superbly evoked by Anna Keay’s choice of nine very disparate people who each followed their own fates, some to glory and others to disaster.’ In The Restless Republic, Anna Keay offers a much-needed insight into the different perspectives and experiences that informed the Interregnum. In the process, she leads us expertly through the labyrinth that was England in the 1650s, a labyrinth with so many dead ends, so many dashed hopes. And she does it with style. A hugely enjoyable, highly endorsed, historical exploration of a fascinating period – and one which with the ascension of Charles III took on an unexpected significance in its year of publication.
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