A tumultuous decade of ingenious novelties

Samuel Rubinstein

THE 1650S ARE BACK. AGAINST THE backdrop of our new Carolean age, a flurry of books has appeared to illuminate our nation’s brief flirtation with republican government. Paul Lay, quondam literary editor of The Critic, led the way with Providence Lost; Clare Jackson’s Devil-Land won the Wolfson Prize two years ago; Henry Reece’s The Fall documents the last days of the English republic; and the second volume of Ronald Hutton’s monumental biography of Oliver Cromwell has just been released to much fanfare. To their number we may add Alice Hunt’s Republic, a year-by-year narrative of “a daring and unprecedented decade that deserves to be written about and understood as a distinct entity”. Cromwell is at its centre. I was quite old when I learned that Oliver Cromwell counted as a “controversial”…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December/January 2025

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