Controversy – Was Charles I responsible for his own downfall?

The British and Irish Civil Wars are famous for battles fought on land such as Marston Moor and sieges such as Bristol. But this was also a war of often difficult amphibious warfare with forces landing on the islands surrounding the mainland and in the distant Caribbean seas. In the first programme of a two-part ... Read more

The last major battle of the British Civil Wars was fought in and around the city of Worcester on 3 September 1651. With the 375th anniversary of this momentous event now upon us, we thought that the time is right for a reappraisal of the campaign and battle. In this, the second of two episodes, ... Read more

The last major battle of the British Civil Wars was fought out in and around the city of Worcester on 3rd September 1651. With the 375th anniversary of this momentous event now upon us, we felt that the time was right to ask for a succinct reappraisal of the campaign and battle. To do this, ... Read more

On 24 April 1648 a rioting crowd in the centre of the city of Norwich accidentally unleashed the largest explosion recorded in seventeenth-century England. Ninety-eight barrels of gunpowder were detonated; about three times as much as was hidden in cellars under Parliament by the notorious Gunpowder Plotters of 1605. Norwich magistrates’ subsequent investigation made the ... Read more

The city of Norwich, England’s largest provincial city during the 1640s, sat deep within the parliamentarian-controlled territory of the Eastern Association. It is sometimes wrongly dismissed as isolated from the fighting, and only marginally affected by the civil wars. Yet in this podcast, Andrew Hopper, Professor of Local and Social History at Oxford Lifelong Learning, ... Read more