Charles I.

In this perceptive and moving portrait of the King who has been damned as a tyrant and revered as a martyr, we come to see Charles I as a victim who contrived his own doom. Charles inherited from his father, James I, the struggle between Parliament and the throne. His support of the Anglican church was rooted in genuine faith. Yet whenever a reasonable and honorable compromise was in reach, he stood obdurate; whenever a firm decision was called for, he vacillated. His mistaken loyalties, lack of understanding, subterfuges, promises made and broken -- all invited the conflict which brought him to the scaffold... where he died with the dignity and courage of a hero. In many ways he was a good and intelligent man, personally gentle, fastidious, studious, a perceptive and stalwart patron of art and science... of Rubens and Van Dyck; the scientist William Harvey; Inigo Jones, the architect who transformed London; Ben Jonson. Civil war raged from 1642 until Charles's capture in 1647, and during all that time efforts at negotiation and compromise were frustrated by his duplicity and intractability. He was as obstinate a prisoner as a sovereign, and his summary trial and fate were foredoomed. Eloquent and vivid, brilliantly combining sharp detail with an over-all panorama of 17th-century politics and passions, Christopher Hibbert's succinct narrative is a delight to read.