Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief
Ronald Hutton
Yale University Press, 480 pages, £25
Do we need another biography of Oliver Cromwell? More than 20 by leading scholars of the English or British revolutions of the 17th century have appeared since 1980 and they are remarkably similar. Cromwell is consistently portrayed as a deeply committed Puritan, a soldier of genius, who believed he was called by God to free the nations of Britain and Ireland from royal and episcopal tyranny to be – like the people of Israel freed from slavery in Egypt – offered the chance to follow a pillar of fire to a Promised Land.
