Interregnum: The People's Republic of Britain

Description

1649. King Charles I had been executed. A quarter of a million had died. Two hundred great houses stood in ruins, and hundreds of villages and towns left shattered and broken. The civil war had been won and within weeks both the monarchy and the House of Lords would be abolished and parliament declared sovereign. What next? This is the story of the only decade in history in which England - and then the entire British Isles - were governed as a republic. In the midst of unprecedented tumult, what was life like for the people who lived through those years - both the winners and the losers? Historian Anna Keay explores the decade and its political, cultural and social upheavals, through the experience of nine contemporaries, from John Bradshaw, the Cheshire lawyer who tried Charles I, to the royalist Countess of Derby who defended the Stuarts' last territorial outpost, from Oliver Cromwell at the heart of events, to the young London prophet Anna Trapnel whose visions transfixed the political nation. Telling a rich and vivid history in matching style, this is a brilliant new take on the most extraordinary decade in British history, and what happened when a conservative people tried revolution.

Born in the West Highlands of Scotland, Anna was educated at Oban High School in Argyll and Bedales in Hampshire. She read history at Magdalen College, Oxford and took her PhD at the University of London. From 1996 to 2002 Anna worked as a curator for Historic Royal Palaces, which looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace and the Banqueting House in Whitehall. From 2002 until 2012 she was Properties Presentation Director of English Heritage, responsible for curating and presenting to the public 420 historic sites across England, from Stonehenge to Kenwood House. She is now Director of The Landmark Trust.

PRAISE FOR ANNA KEAY'S THE LAST ROYAL REBEL 'Brilliant and revelatory. Anna Keay has written a superb biography, which paints a vivid picture of the times and of her subject. She has an instinctive feel for character and place, and combines elegant prose with a novelistic gift for narrative. Above all, she has rescued this much-traduced and forgotten royal rebel from the backwaters and set him once more at the centre of one of Britain's great historical whirlpools' Daily Telegraph 'In Anna Keay's fine biography, this tragic finale is rendered still more bitter by her unfolding of Monmouth's past career, his ever-changing hopes and fears. Keay provides a fascinating portrait of the slippery, charismatic Charles II, and of his genuine love for his son. The brilliance of Keay's account lies in her ability to convey the subtle intricacies of diplomacy and royal ambition. Yet, she also keeps a clear focus on Monmouth's private story ... Keay tells the story with heart-breaking crispness' Jenny Uglow, Guardian 'Anna Keay's fascinating, compelling, outrageous and ultimately tragic book delivers, with scholarly authority, political acumen, exciting narrative and a worldly, playful eye for drama, character and detail a vivid political-personal portrait of the hitherto-neglected Monmouth' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Anna Keay has effectively turned [the] old-fashioned, censorious judgment of Monmouth on its head by making him the hero of his own story. It is a bold approach, and this vividly told story will remain in the reader's memory long after the last page of Keay's book has been turned ... Keay's real achievement in this book is not so much a re-evaluation of Monmouth himself, though that may be well overdue, but her deft analysis of 17th-century personalities and politics . Keay has brought a period almost lost to popular history compellingly alive' Literary Review