Andrew Barclay

Among the most extraordinary figures from English history, Oliver Cromwell stands out for a number of reasons: at the age of 40 in 1640 he was merely a backbench MP and minor gentleman, but he died as Lord Protector and was very nearly king; at the outbreak of civil war in 1642 he was an inexperienced soldier, yet he rapidly demonstrated his flair as an officer and military strategist; finally, he was a religious zealot, who advocated freedom of conscience for Protestants, but not for Roman Catholics.

Cromwell is often seen as Charles I’s leading opponent on the battlefield and at Westminster, but his prominence rests squarely on the creation of the New Model Army in 1645 and his promotion as its Commander in Chief after the execution of Charles I in 1649. It is no wonder that the late Professor Barry Coward, an expert on all things Cromwell, entitled one of his talks ‘Will the Real Oliver Cromwell Please Stand Up’.

Readers of History Today will be familiar with Oliver Cromwell’s most famous utterances, such as his instruction to the artist Peter Lely to paint him ‘pimples, warts and everything’, or in popular parlance ‘warts and all’. Yet this is only recorded in Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting in England (1764), published over a century after Cromwell’s death, and its veracity is highly debatable.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Jackie Eales is Professor of Early Modern History at Canterbury Christ Church University.… (altro)

Small pamphlet describing Barclays life mainly in the maritime industry. He joined the British navy and fought in the American War of Independence. Afterwards he was press-ganged onto a private ship on his way to sign up on another. He escaped the ship in India and made his way back to England where he did a few more trips to India and made some money. He arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1816 and was granted 500 acres south of Launceston near modern day Evandale and was also given a plot in Launceston. Very interesting little pamphlet not only from a bibliographic point of view but on early naval life in the British Empire.… (altro)