Anna Keay

the People's Republic of Britain

Interregnum

‘An exceptional book about an exceptional time’ JOHN ADAMSON ‘Anna Keay has rescued a period of history which for many will have been uncharted territory ... An imaginative triumph’ A.N. WILSON ‘Deft, confident, deeply learned and provocative’ RORY STEWART In 1649 Britain was engulfed by revolution.

The Restless Republic: Britain without a Crown

In the year that the English monarchy was abolished, the Prince of Wales's governor posed the poignant question: what was it that made kings different from their subjects? The answer to him was obvious, and the word that described it was 'ceremony'. From crown wearing in the Middle Ages to the jubilees of modern times the English Monarchy has always used the rituals of majesty to command the affection and loyalty of its subjects. This important and original book is the first to examine properly the ceremonial world of an English sovereign. In an age when the king still healed the sick and took his meals in front of a crowd of spectators, a sovereign's ability to carry off this public role could be as important to his success as his command of the army or management of parliament. Charles II lived through the period of the greatest political change England has ever known, witnessing revolution, regicide and restoration. At just 16 he was cast into exile. A poor relation at the court of the young Louis XIV and then the creature of Philip IV of Spain, he knew what it was to wrestle for recognition. This was his apprenticeship. With The Restoration Charles brought the lessons of exile home. The country was soon rocked by plague and fire, and his brother's conversion to Catholicism would bring it once again to the brink of civil war. In the crisis that developed Charles used the rituals of royalty to help save the very institution of hereditary monarchy. Using a huge range of unpublished primary material, and painting a vivid and detailed picture of the daily life of one of England's most charismatic monarchs, Anna Keay's brilliant 'ritual biography' radically reappraises Charles II as The Magnificent Monarch.

Charles II and the Ceremonies of Power

The Magnificent Monarch

The Life and Death of a Tudor Traitor

The Earl of Essex

'Brilliant and revelatory...a superb biography, which paints a vivid picture of the times and of her subject*****' Daily Telegraph James, Duke of Monmouth, the adored illegitimate son of Charles II, was born in exile the very year that his grandfather was executed and the English monarchy abolished. Abducted from his mother on his father's orders, he emerged from a childhood in the backstreets of Rotterdam to command the ballrooms of Paris, the brothels of Covent Garden and the battlefields of Flanders. Pepys described him as 'the most skittish, leaping gallant that ever I saw, always in action, vaulting or leaping or clambering'. Louis XIV was his mentor, Nell Gwyn his protector, D'Artagnan his lieutenant, William of Orange his confidant, John Dryden his censor and John Locke his comrade. He inspired both delight and disgust, adulation and abhorrence and, in time, love and loyalty almost beyond fathoming and Anna Keay brings him to glorious life, matching rigorous scholarship with a storyteller's gift to enrapturing effect. His story is one of the bond between father and son, the power struggle between King and Parliament and the conflict between love and honour. His life, culminating in his fateful invasion, provides a sweeping history of the turbulent decades in which England as we know it was forged.

The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth

The Last Royal Rebel

Anna Keay brings fresh insight into the daily life of Charles II and identifies how he cultivated a powerful reputation of both himself and monarchy in Britain.

This edition features a specially bound copy of Keay's book together with a facsimile of Joseph Robins's panoramic representation of Queen Victoria's 1838 coronation procession in Westminster Abbey presented together in a clamshell gift box.

Anna Keay

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