The Restless Republic: Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2022

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She also covers in great detail (perhaps too much detail) the toing and froing of arguments and events surrounding exactly how the new republic was to be governed. Despite it being a period of change and radical new ideas, in the end the attitudes of the rulers was too conservative, ending with the push to make Cromwell king. It explains where we are now when, after the death of a monarch who reigned for 70 years, we have a new coronation next year with little or no debate about whether to continue with this anachronism in a 21st century democracy. I seem to have read so many books about the English civil war that I doubt there’s anything different or new I could learn about the period. And yet, Anna Keay’s book manages to give a new, and different slant on the events following the execution of Charles 1. She does this by recounting what happened through the experiences of nine individuals, most of whom were unknown to me.

Thoroughly enjoyable. Anna Keay's book provides a very interesting account of the story of Britain as was (England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland) in 1642 and onwards until the Restoration in 1660. Anna Keay writes in a very clear style that is immediately accessible (if not quite as simple as that of the author of the Ladybird book), although her scholarship shines through. Rather than giving a detailed chronological account of the Commonwealth period, Keay adopts a different approach, focusing on nine individuals who had very different experiences of life during the interregnum. I was particularly intrigued by the account of the Digger movement, who attempted to farm form communal benefit on common land, but found stiff opposition from the local populace.

Relieved to have finished listening to this book about the interregnum before the coronation of Charles III on 6th May 2023! Toyes and Trifles” the destruction of the English Crown Jewels’, History Today, 52 (7), July 2002, pp. 31-7 Charles II and the reconstruction of monarchy’ in Marcello Fantoni, George Gorse and Malcolm Smuts,eds., The Politics of Space: Courts in Europe and the Mediterranean, c. 1500-1750. Bulzoni, 2009 What did this change mean for the people of England, winners and losers in the civil war? Using a series of contemporary men and women as vantage points, The Restless Republic charts extraordinary story of the republic of Britain. Ranging from the corridors of Westminster to the common fields of England, from the radicals in power to the banished royalists and from the dexterous mandarins to the trembling religious visionaries the book will illuminate a world in which a new ideology struggled to take root in a scarred landscape. It is the story of what happened when a conservative people tried revolution.

Restless Republic is aptly named. Readers both expert and casual will revel in seeing this period brought to noisy, brash, colourful by the skilled pen of a natural storyteller. The religious divides of the period are exemplified through the story of the Fifth Monarchist visionary Anna Trapnell. Her experiences, like those of Winstanley, demonstrate how the ‘men of property’ feared anyone who threatened the status quo, and any religious tolerance extended no further than to those whom the state considered ‘Godly’. Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate – the British nations’ only foray into republicanism – receives too little popular attention. It is often referred to obliquely as the Interregnum: a failed experiment and an interruption to the otherwise smooth course of monarchical history. The reasons for this can well be imagined. Modern-day monarchists consider the Republic – in reality a theocratic military dictatorship with no correspondence to modern democracy – a bogeyman to be brought out whenever constitutional monarchy is criticised. Modern-day republicans are understandably irritated and embarrassed that history’s best chance to permanently dissolve hereditary monarchy resulted in martial law, infighting, and – as we see in Restless Republic – a pseudo-monarchy in the form of a hereditary Protectorate. The later Stuart paintings in the Suffolk Collection’ English Heritage Historical Review, I, 2006, pp. 62-74

And even within this period she makes the decision to not base her personal focus on the figure of Oliver Cromwell (although of course he necessarily features) but instead to focus on a group of other contemporary characters and to tell a chronological story of the period (starting with Charles I’s execution and ending with Charles II entering London) but basing her story on her chosen characters (typically moving in series from one main focus character to another, although with some reversion). Dr Michael Wheeler is a Visiting Professor of English at the University of Southampton and a former Lay Canon of Winchester Cathedral. I understand the implications of the printing press more deeply than before. The sudden proliferation of many interpretations of the Bible were, simply, the result of access. Before the press, there wasn’t much need for the populace to read, but once books and pamphlets and newspapers were created, people everywhere were reading and writing and wreaking havoc. I’d not given thought to the birth of newspapers (and almost immediately, propaganda). A world without writing, suddenly flooded with words, reeled from the chaos. I imagine the global access to the internet is having an almost equivalent effect.

Like others among the book’s nine leading actors, Nedham pops up again as the story of the republic unfolds. Towards the end of the story, his weekly issue vaguely announces that the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell’s son Richard, has dissolved Parliament “for diverse weighty reasons”. “No amount of news management”, Keay comments, “could disguise the fact that the new Parliament had been expelled on the army’s initiative.” I had not previously realised the extent of the conflicts between the executive leadership and the various iterations of Parliament they allowed to exist, only to repeatedly dismiss them for asserting their own sovereignty. And it was fascinating to see how little unity there among the governing elite was in deciding what do do with power (other than to completely subjugate Ireland) and how unprepared they were to carry out a political program, other than rewarding itself and its followers and punishing its enemies. It makes me wonder whether there was any way to govern a nation as large as England (let alone adding Scotland and Ireland to the pot) in that time without the hierarchies and reward structures of the monarchy. Democracy evolved very slowly in the U.K.

For newcomers to the complex subject of the English Civil war [or The Great Rebellion], the Regicide of Charles I, and the following Commonwealth and Protectorate, this is a good book to grab hold of. For those who have some experience of dipping into Stuart-Cromwellian Britain, there is a considerable amount to be gained too.