Oliver Cromwell
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 in the English civil war
‘The Wars of the Three Kingdoms’ is the best description of the devastating conflict that erupted in England, Ireland and…
How Charles II sought to obliterate a decade of British history
When the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, in the person of that ‘lovely black boy’ Charles II, was announced in…
Paradise and paradox: an inner pilgrimage into John Milton
When E. Nesbit published Wet Magic in 1913 (a charming novel in which the children encounter a mermaid), she took…
Letters: It’s too late for Boris
Disastrous decisions Sir: In his otherwise excellent analysis of Boris Johnson’s premiership (‘The missing leader’, 19 September), Fraser Nelson suggests…
A.C. Grayling reduces history to a game of quidditch
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
Game of thrones: five kings spanning five centuries launch a new series on royalty
Nigel Jones reviews the first five titles to appear in a new series on British monarchs
Rebellion without a cause: Peter Ackroyd's curious Civil War
How our perceptions of 17th-century England are dominated by the convulsions of the two decades at its centre! Peter Ackroyd’s…
What Englishmen learnt from 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
