Oliver Cromwell
The traitor who gives Downing Street a bad name
Even by 17th-century standards, George Downing’s duplicity in serving both Oliver Cromell and Charles II was exceptional and set new standards for unscrupulousness
What modern Britain should learn from Charles I
Next week marks the 400th anniversary of the accession to the throne of Charles I. This moment began what was…
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
Brother against brother
‘The Wars of the Three Kingdoms’ is the best description of the devastating conflict that erupted in England, Ireland and…
A nation in limbo
When the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, in the person of that ‘lovely black boy’ Charles II, was announced in…
An inner pilgrimage
When E. Nesbit published Wet Magic in 1913 (a charming novel in which the children encounter a mermaid), she took…
Letters
Disastrous decisions Sir: In his otherwise excellent analysis of Boris Johnson’s premiership (‘The missing leader’, 19 September), Fraser Nelson suggests…
Fighting for progress
The 17th century scores highly — especially England’s part in it — in A.C. Grayling’s ‘points system’ of history. If only the study of the past were that simple, says Ruth Scurr
Of cabbages and kings
Nigel Jones reviews the first five titles to appear in a new series on British monarchs
Shades of the classroom
How our perceptions of 17th-century England are dominated by the convulsions of the two decades at its centre! Peter Ackroyd’s…
The lure of Europe
A tour of the Continent was a prerequisite for young Jacobean noblemen training for statesmanship — provided they resisted its corrupting influence, says Blair Worden
