Oliver Cromwell (Reputations) - Softcover

Davis, J. C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340731184 ISBN 13: 9780340731185

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2001

Synopsis

This comprehensive new study provides an original and provocative approach to Cromwell's reputation and role in the English revolution. J. C. Davis's penetrating analysis reveals Cromwell's successes and failures and offers a fascinating assessment of his life and achievements.

About this title

Review:

Colin Davis brings an unrelenting intelligence to his interrogation of the treacherous sources for the life of Oliver Cromwell, and he demands answers to radical questions. The result is a study that is wonderfully fresh, bold and challenging. It makes for gripping reading. --John Morrill, Professor of British and Irish Histo
Overall, this book is excellent and is a very enjoyable read. Concise and clear, it is a good starting point for those who do not know much about Oliver Cromwell. However, for those with more knowledge it offers new and often valuable insigts into the man and includes all the latest historical research. I can thoroughly recommend this book. --Journal of the Sealed Knot Society
Although other historians have already provided recent and easily accessible studies of Cromwell...Davis's is distinctively different and will undoubtedly find new readers. --Times Higher Education Supplement

Synopsis:

Oliver Cromwell's greatness has rarely been disputed. He is acknowledged as a colussus, a Promethean figure of English and Irish history. But the nature of that greatness has been subjected to a wide variety of interpretations, often passionately held and running to extremes, depicting him as a figure of great wickedness or great virtue. To make sense of his place in history we have to understand the evolution of his reputation and the purposes served by its various forms. Davis argues that, despite the extremes of interpretation, Cromwell's reputation has never been indefinitely elastic; that there have always been acknowledged facts which had to be faced up to. The evidence, and in some cases the lack of evidence, have to be appreciated contextually. So, Cromwell's rise from 'obscurity', his astonishing success as a soldier, his religion, his eventual dominance as a politician, his success and failure as a statesman are here re-examined in the dual light of his reputation and the context of his times. The result is a fresh and provocative assessment of his life and achievement, his role in the English Revolution and his place in British history.Oliver Cromwell's greatness has rarely been disputed.

He is acknowledged as a colossus, a Promethean figure of English and British history. But the nature of that greatness has been subjected to a wide variety of interpretations, often passionately held and running to extremes, depicting him as a figure of great wickedness or great virtue. To make sense of his place in history we have to understand the evolution of his reputation and the purposes served by its various forms. This book argues that, despite the extremes of interpretation, Cromwell's reputation has never been infinitely elastic; that there have always been acknowledged facts which had to be faced up to. The evidence, and in some cases the lack of evidence, have to be appreciated contextually. So, Cromwell's rise from 'obscurity', his astonishing success as a soldier, his religion, his eventual dominance as a politician, his success and failure as a statesman are here re-examined in the dual light of his reputation and the context of his times. The result is a fresh and provocative assessment of his life and achievements, his role in the English Revolution and his place in British history.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0340731184
• ISBN 13: 9780340731185
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 254