Simon Heffer
The Poet Pamphleteer
Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham
By Blair Worden
Oxford University Press 448pp £25
Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot
By Anna Beer
Bloomsbury 480pp £20
This year is the 400th anniversary of John Milton’s birth, and once more this most elusive and fascinating of men demonstrates the difficulties of penetrating his life and mind. Blair Worden, one of our most distinguished historians of the seventeenth century, nonetheless roundly succeeds in doing so. While most people have a predominant impression of Milton as a poet, for Worden it is his political life, lived at a time when a ferment of ideas was boiling up, that fascinates and requires examination. Worden’s thesis is that Milton, like his fellow (and less ideological) poet Andrew Marvell, came under the strong influence of the hack, propagandist and serial turncoat Marchamont Nedham when extolling the regime that executed Charles I in 1649 and then morphed into the Protectorate four years later. Although Marvell and Nedham share the billing in the subtitle to Worden’s book, it is Milton who steals the show: and Worden reminds us – indeed, given how forgotten this part of Milton’s life now is, perhaps informs some – what a formidable, articulate and driven pamphleteer Milton was, and how explicitly his writings in this genre revealed the man’s soul and the towering nature of his convictions.
Marvell had been a royalist – as the journalist Nedham had, when such an allegiance was the most effective way for him to earn a living – but Milton, an intellectual on an altogether higher level, was of the mind that revolutionised England in the 1640s right from the very
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk