Britain in Revolution by Austin Woolrych

From beginning to end, a complex story is related with great skill and a deft and judicious touch, and a mass of detail is carefully controlled, managed and moulded to form a clear and magisterial account. The style is elegant and lucid and it is a joy to read. It provides a masterly political (and military) narrative of a complex period. ( Peter Gaunt, Reviews in History)īritain in Revolution is a splendid volume and a fitting high point of a very distinguished career. It is by some margin the longest and most substantial single-volume history we have of these years. ( Mark Kishlansky, Times Literary Supplement)īritain in Revolution is a huge book in every sense, the distillation of a lifetimes-worth of teaching, researching and writing, resulting in a large, sweeping narrative account of a very high standard. students will find Woolrych a reliable guide. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.īritain in Revolution will serve as a useful summary of one of the most confused and confusing periods of British history. He brilliantly interweaves the history of the three kingdoms and their peoples, gripping the reader with the fast-paced yet always balanced story. He captures the drama and the passion, the momentum of events and the force of contingency. The Stuart monarchy was in abeyance for twenty years in all three kingdoms, and Charles I famously met his death on the scaffold.Īustin Woolrych breathes life back into the story of these years, the sweep of his prose buttressed by the authority of a lifetime's scholarship. Throughout the middle decades of the seventeenth century England, Scotland, and Ireland were convulsed by political upheaval and wracked by rebellion and civil war. These were the most turbulent years of British history and their reverberations have been felt down the centuries.

This is the definitive history of the English Civil War, set in its full historical context from the accession of Charles I to the Restoration of Charles II.

Britain in Revolution by Austin Woolrych