Description

‘Fascinating, gripping, revelatory’ KATE WILLIAMS

‘An epic and clever history’ GARETH RUSSELL

‘I know no rival to this book in its presentation of a major dynasty in English history’ DIARMAID MACCULLOCH

THOMAS MADE ENGLAND. OLIVER MADE BRITAIN.

Within a century, the Cromwell family produced two of the most powerful, impactful and controversial commoners in British history. Thomas served the Tudors, helping to forge Henry VIII’s autocratic state and the Church of England; Oliver led a revolution that executed a king, abolished the monarchy and established a republic, before founding a ruling dynasty. Each rose from obscurity to the very centre of power. From a Putney brewhouse to the throne and back again, their rise was improbable, their fall dramatic. Both changed Britain forever.

In The House of Cromwell, Miranda Malins brings these two giants blazingly to life alongside the remarkable cast of family members who shaped them – the ambitious wives and mothers, the loyal siblings, the scheming allies and the forgotten children whose stories illuminate everything we thought we knew about Thomas and Oliver, and about early modern Britain itself.

Ranging across two centuries of history, from the Wars of the Roses to the Hanoverian succession, this is history at its most intimate and most sweeping – a book to captivate everyone who loved Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy and who wants to go further, deeper and wider into the world that made and unmade the Cromwells.

Family mattered above all else to the Cromwells. To understand them, we must understand that family. This is their story.

Publisher Review

‘I know no rival to this book in its presentation of a major dynasty in English history, done with clarity and verve. It succeeds in doing justice to the great figures bookending the story of the Cromwells, but it also rescues from obscurity some important members of the supporting cast’ Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of Thomas Cromwell and The Reformation ‘Fascinating, gripping, revelatory … Malins is a determined historical detective and wonderful writer in one and this book will make you see the Cromwells anew. A marvel’ Kate Williams, author of Regina and Rival Queens ‘To compare the two mighty Cromwells … and link them through their connecting extended families is one of those great ideas that seem so obvious once somebody has achieved it … It is also popular history at its best, colourful, eloquent, witty and compassionate’ Ronald Hutton, author of The Making of Oliver Cromwell ‘This brilliantly researched, utterly absorbing book, reminds us that the Cromwell family have been more important than any royal dynasty in shaping the British Isles. A powerful antidote to our obsession with kings and queens’ Linda Porter, author of Royal Renegades ‘A comprehensive, scholarly, and thoroughly engaging study of one of British history’s most famous (and infamous) dynasties: epic in scope and written with wit and verve’ Steven Veerapen, author of The Wisest Fool ‘An impressively researched and intricately detailed history … Malins champions the fascinating – and too oft forgotten – Cromwell women, and brings all the ambitions and talents, the highs and lows, of nearly two centuries of Cromwells finally to light’ Breeze Barrington, author of The Graces ‘Those of us who flatter ourselves we know the Cromwells from ‘Wolf Hall’ may yet be surprised by how much of colour and humanity there is still to discover’ Sarah Gristwood, author of Blood Sisters ‘A sweeping, eye-opening and empathetic account of one of Britain’s most intriguing families’ Luke Pepera, author of Motherland