Anna Keay
Autore di The Restless Republic: Britain without a Crown
Sull'Autore
Anna Keay is Properties Presentation Director at English Heritage.
Opere di Anna Keay
LAND - Antony Gormley 1 copia
Opere correlate
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Data di nascita
- 1974
- Sesso
- female
- Nazionalità
- UK
- Luogo di nascita
- Scotland, UK
- Luogo di residenza
- Scotland, UK
- Istruzione
- University of Oxford (Magdalen College)
- Attività lavorative
- historian
- Relazioni
- Keay, John (father)
Keay, Julia (mother) - Organizzazioni
- English Heritage
Utenti
Recensioni
Liste
Premi e riconoscimenti
Potrebbero anche piacerti
Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 10
- Opere correlate
- 1
- Utenti
- 378
- Popolarità
- #63,851
- Voto
- 4.1
- Recensioni
- 6
- ISBN
- 21
To be honest, Ladybird Books were an important part of my childhood, and a principal source of my understanding of history, not least because the company was based in Loughborough, the town in whose near hinterland I grew up. As my clearest memory of that book was the opening page which detailed how, as an infant, Cromwell had been picked up by a pet monkey that lived in the family home, and taken up on to the roof, it is perhaps not surprising that I was a little hazy on the closer detail of the Commonwealth period.
Anna Keay writes in a very clear style that is immediately accessible (if not quite as simple as that of the author of the Ladybird book), although her scholarship shines through. Rather than giving a detailed chronological account of the Commonwealth period, Keay adopts a different approach, focusing on nine individuals who had very different experiences of life during the interregnum. I was particularly intrigued by the account of the Digger movement, who attempted to farm form communal benefit on common land, but found stiff opposition from the local populace.
I also enjoyed reading about the turncoat ‘journalist’ Marchamont Nedham. The 17th Century marked the onset of the periodical, with forerunners of modern newspaper being printed and distributed throughout the capital. Having previously been an ardent advocate of the Royalist cause, to the extent that he was imprisoned by the Commonwealth, Nedham reinvented himself as the regime’s PR mouthpiece, in which guise he published the Mercurius Politicus, and essentially invented the concept of political journalism.
I had also not properly appreciated how long it was between the execution of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell’s appointment as Lord Protector. I think I had simply assumed that the latter immediately followed on from the former, whereas in fact Cromwell retained his role as leader of the Parliamentary Army, and it was not until four years after Charles’s death that he ascended to the Protectorship.
Fascinating and clear – definitely worthy of all the encomia that were strewed across its cover.… (altro)