The King and the Gentleman; Charles Stuart and Oliver Cromwell 1599-1649

London: Hutchinson, 1999. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Good/Good. vi, 473, [1] pages. Illustrations. Occasional Footnotes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Corners of a couple of pages creased. + Derek Wilson, one of the leading biographers and novelists, came to prominence thirty years ago, after graduating from Cambridge University, with A Tudor Tapestry: Men Women and Society in Reformation England. This was followed by several critically acclaimed and best-selling books, such as Rothschild: A Story of Wealth and Power; Sweet Robin: Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester; Hans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man; and, most recently, The King and The Gentleman: Charles Stuart and Oliver Cromwell 1599-1649. He has also written and presented numerous radio and television programs. For all the myths surrounding Oliver Cromwell and Charles Stuart, there is no detailed account of any meeting between them. Yet they were almost exact contemporaries, embodying virtually everything for which politicians, bishops, preachers, and generals contended. The paths of these two men gradually converged until a frosty morning in 1649, when the executioner's axe ended one man's life and raised the other to the brink of absolute power. In his moving history, Derek Wilson brings to life the politics and the personalities that once shook a kingdom. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: In a full-blooded example of old-fashioned storytelling, biographer Wilson attempts a dual biography of Charles I of England and his fatal nemesis. Hoping to free his subjects from an academic cage of "isms," Wilson aims to restore the human face of the 17th century, paying special attention to Charles and Oliver in their formative years and above all to their religious views. He suggests that both wished to transcend the Puritan education that had instilled in them their immutable faith: while Charles rose ever nearer sensuous Catholicism, Cromwell gravitated toward charismatic evangelism. Direct and accessible, Wilson writes with immediacy and a minimum of footnotes, intending "to bridge the gap between the archive and the airline lounge, the study and the bedsit." There are illuminating flashes of color: we learn that the aging Cromwell once began a pillow fight during a constitutional debate.