David Horspool

How Charles II sought to obliterate a decade of British history

Anna Keay resurrects nine figures from the Interregnum – a period the later Stuarts hoped would be forgotten

Some things were not to be forgotten. The posthumous execution at Tyburn of Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton in 1661. [Alamy]
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  • The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

    Anna Keay

    William Collins, pp. 416, £25

When the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, in the person of that ‘lovely black boy’ Charles II, was announced in May 1660 it was with a flourish of public amnesia. Charles had, it was declared, already been king for 11 years, from the moment in January 1649 when his father had been unlawfully executed.

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