People who can list the wives of Henry VIII are often not aware that England was a republic for eleven years. For diehard monarchists, the period of the English Republic, ‘the Interregnum’, was a blip when everyone was waiting for the monarch to return. Not so, argues Alice Hunt in this splendidly dissident and engrossing history. And yet, ultimately, her book presents the English Republic as a series of monumental disappointments.

It doesn’t help that the English Republic means just one man to most people: Oliver Cromwell. He first comes into focus here as the butcher of Ireland. Hunt’s vivid story of how he forced horses into Drogheda through a breach in the city walls illustrates the qualities that exemplified him as a commander. It’s exactly this kind of detail that brings her characters to life. It can be difficult to understand a man who was prone to drop everything and pause while he pondered what God really wanted him to do, especially if that man was also a first-class political opportunist. As well as fierce determination, Cromwell enjoyed a share of good luck so astounding that some of his opponents decided he must have sold his soul to the Devil. 

The English Republic that Hunt depicts was brutally pragmatic as well as incessantly religious. Few now remember that it was under Cromwell that Jews were readmitted to England. The Dutch rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, a brilliant Sephardic printer and tutor of Baruch Spinoza, was the man who negotiated with