History Recounted in a Most Compelling Formula

Killers of the King – The men who dared to execute Charles 1 (with illustrations including colour).  By Charles Spencer.

ISBN 976-1- 4088-5170-8 Bloomsbury. Hardback £20, eBook £17.99

Seven years of bloody and violent civil fighting, beginning in 1642, took place before the arrest of  Charles 1 who appeared in court to be  told he was sentenced to death as a “Tyrant and Traitor”.  He laughed at this and during the reading of the charge, the head of his cane broke off and fell to the floor.  Nobody picked it up for him so he retrieved it himself. The King’s fatal error at the trial was thought to be a refusal to plead. The fighting that led up to this moment had been the escalating political, religious and social tensions between Charles 1 and parliament.

After the public beheading in Whitehall of Charles 1, brought about by signatories of high rank across the land, Oliver Cromwell took up office as Head of the country.  He was in this position for five years as the first Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.  However, following his death, Charles II, came to the throne formerly held by his father.  He had returned from The Netherlands harbouring  the determination to “round up” all the people who had signed his father’s death warrant, with the aim of  torturing, persecuting and killing  them  to the last man. Known as the ‘regicides’ these men either pleaded for mercy, fled the country, or awaited their sentence, which included hanging drawing and quartering and for others, imprisonment. Much of the book is taken up with the fine detail of this process which is more compelling and intoxicating for the fact that it is so true and part of the history of our divided and traumatised country at that time.

The accolades from other book reviewers are there for all to read in any bookshop on the  flysheet.   My recommendation is that if you need a compelling read at Christmas or in the New Year  – or one of your chosen gift-receivers does – this is the perfect book.  The depth of research and finely-tuned accounts of the machinations going on between its covers can only be scantily alluded to here but I feel sure it will leave a deep impression on all who read it not only for the historical facts but also for the racy, lively and compelling way it speeds along to its conclusion. One last thing to note:-  the fact that retribution was meted-out on the signatories of Charles 1’s death warrant also bears a moral to any modern story where power struggles feature:- food for thought , no doubt.