Ronald Hutton and Alice Hunt

Historians Professor Ronald Hutton and Professor Alice Hunt discuss Oliver Cromwell and the cataclysmic events of the 17th century when Britain briefly became a republic.

Hutton is professor of history at Bristol University and a leading authority on the British Isles in the 16th and 17th centuries. Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief is the second volume of his acclaimed biography of Cromwell. It follows Cromwell’s career from the capture of Charles I to his seizure of supreme power. The seven years from 1647 saw the execution of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth of England. Hutton describes a period when Cromwell was at his most ruthless and brutal.

Hunt is professor of early modern literature and history at the University of Southampton. She is often seen in the media discussing monarchy and the royal family. In Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade 1649-1660, she describes a turbulent decade of republican rule in the 1650s. She says it was a period of bewildering change and uncertainty but also a period of innovation and opportunity that had a lasting impact on British monarchy, politics, religion and culture.