Oliver Cromwell is, unequivocally, a modern British hero: in the 2000 BBC poll to find the greatest Brit of the past millennium, he came in third, behind Churchill and Shakespeare but ahead of any king. His life is exceptionally well recorded, so that more of his words survive than those of any other ruler of Britain before Queen Victoria. Unsurprisingly, therefore, he is also very well studied, with five full-length biographies of him by respected scholars published since 1990, as well as hundreds of books, articles and chapters concerned with aspects of his career or events in which he played a part.