The book doesn't work as a general introduction, but readers who already know some of the history will find it full of colorful personalities and scenes and evocative period writings that bring to life the people, culture and violent turmoil of the age. Fixated on trees rather than the forest, Purkiss offers no clear overview of events or much coherent interpretation of the conflict, aside from some facile psychoanalysis ('Charles I's longing to make the monarchy independent of any hurtful criticism proceeded from the bullied child he was').

And she interweaves an avowedly disjointed, episodic kings-and-battles narrative of military campaigns and political maneuverings, replete with dramatic eyewitness accounts. She also slathers on plenty of social history, digressing on everything from contemporary housing to cookbooks. ) draws a gallery of sharp biographical sketches of participants from Cromwell to ordinary soldiers, paying special attention to the oft-neglected doings of women, like aristocratic intriguer Lucy Hay and radical dissenter Anna Trapnel. Diane Purkiss is a Fellow and Tutor at Keble College, Oxford. /rebates/2f97800071506182fEnglish-Civil-Peoples-History-Purkiss-000715061X2fplp&. Oxford historian Purkiss ( The Witch in History : The English Civil War: A Peoples History (9780007150618) by Purkiss, Diane and a great selection of similar New, Used and Collectible Books available now at great prices.

Diane Purkiss is a Fellow and Tutor at Keble College, Oxford. In this colorful narrative, Diane Purkiss vividly brings to life the history that changed the course of Western government. There are many ways to approach the history of the 17th-century upheaval that beheaded a king and laid the foundations for democratic revolutions to come, and this absorbing, ungainly study tries them all. Diane Purkiss, Literature, Gender and Politics During the English Civil War. The English Civil Wars dramatic consequences - rejecting divine right monarchy in favor of parliamentary rule - continue to influence our lives.

The English Civil War by Diane Purkiss