The essays brought together in this first, edited collection to be devoted specifically to the memory of the Civil Wars, provides a clear and accessible introduction to this fast-developing field of study, bringing together a diverse group of scholars who are working at its cutting edge.
Remembering the English Civil Wars is the first collection of essays to explore how the bloody struggle which took place between the supporters of king and parliament during the 1640s was viewed in retrospect.
The English Civil Wars were perhaps the most calamitous series of conflicts in the country's recorded history. Over the past twenty years there has been a surge of interest in the way that the Civil Wars were remembered by the men, women and children who were unfortunate enough to live through them. The essays brought together in this book not only provide a clear and accessible introduction to this fast-developing field of study but also bring together the voices of a diverse group of scholars who are working at its cutting edge. Through the investigation of a broad, but closely interrelated, range of topics - including elite, popular, urban and local memories of the wars, as well as the relationships between civil war memory and ceremony, material culture and concepts of space and place - the essays contained in this volume demonstrate, with exceptional vividness and clarity, how the people of England and Wales continued to be haunted by the ghosts of the mid-century conflict throughout the decades which followed.
The book will be essential reading for all students of the English Civil Wars, Stuart Britain and the history of memory.
"This wide-ranging, rich and innovative collection throws new light on how memories of the civil war were fashioned and refashioned by former participants and by their families, friends, allies and adversaries. The essays explore parliamentarians and royalists, individuals and institutions, and memories of place as well as people."?
Bernard Capp, University of Warwick and FBA, UK