Many historical problems connected with Cromwell's political career still await satisfactory explanation. In this important contribution to a distinguished series, Barry Coward (author of Longman's hugely successful survey of "The Stuart Age") uses the words and writings of Cromwell and his contemporaries, and the wealth of recent scholarship on the period, to provide a fresh account of Cromwell's extraordinary career, and a new understanding of his enigmatic and contradictory personality. The clear, attractive narrative will commend the book to non-specialists, while Dr Coward's penetrating analysis will be necessary reading for serious students of the seventeenth century.