27 July 2020
The British Civil Wars of the mid-17th century are my passion. This extraordinary period has everything: epic battles, espionage and adventure, the only trial and execution of a monarch, and radical constitutional experiments, all documented by newspapers and pamphlets in the "first age of journalism". This is a paradise for lovers of the written word: oceans of ink spilled in a war fought not over who should rule, but how they should rule. It is grown-up history: the messiest, most complicated corner of Britain's past; the blot on the timeline; the gap in our neat story of kings and queens.
