Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) orchestrated the overthrow of the English monarchy and for a time turned England into a republican Commonwealth. This riveting history sweeps the reader through the Lord Protector's early life and marriage, two civil wars, campaigns in Ireland and Scotland, his foreign and domestic policies, and the sickness and death of England's unofficial dictator. The Times approved of the book's vivid writing, interesting speculation, and the author's portrait of Cromwell as he would have "desired to be painted."