Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution

This third volume of Peter Ackroyd s History of England covers the Stuart dynasty, which brought together England and Scotland during a period marked by civil war and the killing of a king.

In this book, Peter Ackroyd has captured the period as only he can. From the accession of the thrillingly unappealing but eloquent James VI & I, to his hapless heir, Charles I, whose taste in art was peerless but whose political judgment was so fatally poor, to the ruthless Oliver Cromwell, ultimately as much a despot as that man of blood, the king he executed, Ackroyd tells the story of the turbulent seventeenth century, in which England suffered through three civil wars two fought between Parliament and the Crown, and the third, the Glorious Rebellion of 1688, which saw Charles II s brother James deposed and sent into exile.

"Rebellion" doesn t just give us the brutality of war and politics; it also provides glimpses of the period s extraordinarily rich literature Milton, Hobbes, Donne, Jacobean tragedy, Shakespeare s late masterpieces and of ordinary life lived against a backdrop of constant disruption and uncertainty."