The execution of the king took place on a bleak, bitterly cold afternoon in January. As the executioner landed the single blow that severed Charles I’s head, the crowd let out a deep collective moan. Within weeks both the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished. The future was in the hands of the people.’ Dr Michael Wheeler is a Visiting Professor of English at the University of Southampton and a former Lay Canon of Winchester Cathedral.

The Restless Republic tells the story of what life was like during the unprecedented and unrepeated decade when Britain was governed without a king. Who cut radical paths? And who suffered the monumental costs?

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The book is fascinating on the dilemma the Republic faced which was that while there was a coalition which agreed on deposing Charles II (and even a relatively large group that felt his execution was inevitable) there was almost no consensus on how to replace him – from an alternative monarchy, to a military regime, to a parliamentary democracy – with multiple shades of each, or on what form of religious settlement was appropriate.

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. Charlotte, Countess of Derby – and her attempts to defend the Isle of Man against the Parliamentary forces while her husband was losing his life after Charles II ill-fated attempt to regain his throne with Scottish forces failed at the Battle of Worcester Discovering the stories of a religious group wanting to return to the land, a grand lady on the losing side holding onto her lands and titles, a newspaper man who feels so modern, and finding out a man who we should all know along side the name Cromwell. It's strange how much of standard US history is taught as though it exists disconnected from its own past. The child-like fairy tale that “devout people who were deprived of religious freedom by evil kings left for a new land” is an almost scandalous simplification. Understanding more about the history and politics of England in the 1600s gave me insights into the actions of the Pilgrims, Quakers and other sects that came to the New World. Ironically, many seemed to seek the freedom to practice their own version of religion, while denying that same freedom to others, a tradition often still practiced today. This is necessarily quite a broad brush view which focuses primarily on domestic political change - military conflicts and foreign affairs are dealt with briefly and only in so far as they touch the main narrative - but this serves to give a vivid and colourful view of an unusual decade. The biographical approach was underpinned by a chronological progression through the Interregnum so that characters we met early on reappeared in later chapters, and this worked well to make it clear how events unfolded and affected others.The Restless Republic is the story of the extraordinary decade that followed. It takes as its guides the people who lived through those years. Among them is Anna Trapnel, the daughter of a Deptford shipwright whose visions transfixed the nation. John Bradshaw, the Cheshire lawyer who found himself trying the King. Marchamont Nedham, the irrepressible newspaper man and puppet master of propaganda. Gerrard Winstanley, who strove for a Utopia of common ownership where no one went hungry. William Petty, the precocious scientist whose mapping of Ireland prefaced the dispossession of tens of thousands. And the indomitable Countess of Derby who defended to the last the final Royalist stronghold on the Isle of Man. Overall, a different and panoramic but very readable perspective of Britain without a crown as a Restless Republic

Deft, confident, deeply learned and provocative, underpinned by an extraordinary sense of the landscape and the architecture within which events occurred – alert to the strange echoes and coincidences of history contained in those spaces – Anna Keay traces with fierce intelligence the remarkable and restless lives of a restless republic’ Personally, I wanted more context: Anna Trapnell, for example, was a Puritan prophetess and she feels like a singular character in this narrative. I'd have liked to have seen her placed into a 'tradition' of female visionaries such as Margery Kempe, Elizabeth Barton and Anne Askew to help make cultural sense of her. At the top of the Labour party, a nostalgic orthodoxy runs even deeper. As his speech last week outlining five “national missions” reminded us, Keir Starmer does not use a particularly moral vocabulary, or offer much of an expansive vision. Beyond his creditable plans for a greener economy, everything blurs into a familiar mixture of toughness on crime and talk of “opportunity”, and his somewhat improbable quest for the “highest sustained growth in the G7”. Substantial …. The strength of this admirable biography is that it makes the reader consider Monmouth from Monmouth’s point of view, without the benefit of hindsight. Here is Monmouth, and here is his world. It is a considerable achievement’ Viscerally compelling. The Last Royal Rebel is the very best sort of historical work. It is based on the meticulous use of an eclectic array of primary sources, and represents substantial painstaking and well-documented research. The action, intrigue, romance, and suspense drive the reader relentlessly toward the stirring conclusion.Splendid. Plotted like a novel, full of riveting detail, The Last Royal Rebel offers a vivid portrayal of politics in the dynastic age, when bloodlines ruled and accidents of nature swayed the fate of nations’.

The idea of reinstituting the office of king was not in itself new. Few even of those involved in the trial of Charles I, Cromwell included, had expected the monarchy itself to fall and after those radical first months the revival of the office of monarch had been periodically discussed. From 1996 to 2002 Anna worked as a curator for Historic Royal Palaces. From 2002 until 2012 she was Properties Presentation Director at English Heritage. Keay’s masterstroke is in bringing the era to life through the eyes of those who knew monarchy, war, Commonwealth, Protectorate, and Restoration. Through focusing on people who experienced these tumultuous decades and therefore had a wealth of experience of different systems of government, Restless Republic can make sense of a period which might seem baffling.

Forthcoming Events

Events such as Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland are recounted through the reporting of Marchamont Needham in his Mercurius Politicus. The Irish campaign, the reduction of the remaining Royalist outposts, the first Anglo-Dutch War, the English expedition against the Spanish West Indies (known as the ‘Western Design’), and the Flanders campaign of 1657-1658 are discussed not so much in military terms, but in terms of their impact on events at home. This book is not a military history in the purest sense, and, as a result, there are a few generalisations that require further consideration. But given the sheer breadth of its subject matter, this is but a minor point. century monarchy’, introductory essay for State Papers On-line 1603-1714, Prof John Miller, ed., 2010. http://gale.cengage.co.uk/state-papers-online-15091714/part-iii.aspx A] vivid panorama … Keay conjures up with nuance and panache the single most fascinating decade in the history of Britain and Ireland, revealing it to be at once weirdly ancient and strangely modern’ Paul Lay, The Times. Book of the Week and a ‘Best Book’ of 2022. The sales pitch is a technocratic quietening of Tory unrest, exemplified by the attempted resolution of the Northern Ireland protocol, which at one point was set to involve the King. But clearly, Conservative passions are still boiling away, as proved by the weekend’s warnings from Johnson and his allies that a deal with the EU could trigger – appropriately enough – “civil war”. 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.