The House Of Cromwell with Miranda Malins

'An epic and clever history' Gareth Russell

Within a century, the Cromwell family produced two of the most powerful and controversial commoners in British history. Thomas served the Tudors, helping to forge Henry VIII's autocratic state and the Church of England; Oliver led a revolution that executed a king, abolished the monarchy and established a republic, before founding a ruling dynasty. Each rose from obscurity to the very centre of power. From a Putney brewhouse to the throne and back again, their rise was improbable, their fall dramatic. Both changed Britain forever.

In The House of Cromwell, Miranda Malins brings these two giants blazingly to life alongside the remarkable cast of family members who shaped them – the ambitious wives and mothers, the loyal siblings, the scheming allies and the forgotten children whose stories illuminate everything we thought we knew about Thomas and Oliver, and about early modern Britain itself.

Family mattered above all else to the Cromwells. To understand them, we must understand that family. This is their story.

'I know no rival to this book in its presentation of a major dynasty in English history, done with clarity and verve. It succeeds in doing justice to the great figures bookending the story of the Cromwells, but it also rescues from obscurity some important members of the supporting cast' Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of Thomas Cromwell and The Reformation

Miranda Malins is a historian specialising in Oliver Cromwell, his family and the Civil War and Commonwealth period. She studied at Cambridge University, leaving with a PhD, and is a long-standing trustee of the Cromwell Association. She writes for many publications, is a regular judge of the Historical Writers' Association Crown Awards, and co-hosts the podcast 1666 And All That. The House of Cromwell is her first work of nonfiction.