England in 1648, and as the English Civil Wars still simmer, Hezekiah Hillier visits London after the death of his wife and son, and goes to the Hospital of Bedlam to view the inmates. He is falsely imprisoned by his brother in the asylum, but vows to escape and one day have his revenge. Hez […]
Historia interview: Claire Hobson
On 29 May, Oak Apple Day, it’ll be 396 years from Charles II’s birth in 1630 and 366 since his restoration. To mark the occasion, Historia spoke to Claire Hobson, whose biography charts those 30 turbulent years that formed the future king. Your book, Charles II: From the Cradle to the Crown, looks self-explanatory from […]
Prince Rupert of the Rhine by Mark Turnbull
Prince Rupert of the Rhine was an intrinsic part of the civil wars that devastated the three kingdoms of Stuart Britain. A nephew of King Charles I, Rupert was both the archetypical royalist hero and parliamentarian villain. In his lifetime, he accumulated at least nine derogatory pseudonyms – from ‘Duke of Plunderland’ to ‘The Diabolical […]
Fiction and the English Civil Wars
Jemahl Evans, author of the Blandford Candy series of novels about a man known as the last Roundhead, surveys 300 years of fiction about the English Civil Wars. The popularity of the English Civil Wars and the wider 17th century as a period for historical fiction novelists has ebbed and flowed over the last 300 […]