Charles Spencer

January 1649. After seven years of fighting in the bloodiest war in Britain's history, Parliament faced a problem: what to do with a defeated king, a king who refused to surrender?

Parliamentarians resolved to do the unthinkable, to disregard the Divine Right of Kings and hold Charles I to account for the appalling suffering and slaughter endured by his people. On an icy winter's day on a scaffold outside Whitehall, the King of England was executed.

When the dead king's son, Charles II, was restored to the throne, he set about enacting a deadly wave of retribution against all those responsible for his father's death. Bestselling historian Charles Spencer explores this violent clash of ideals through the individuals whose fates were determined by that one, momentous decision.

In January 1649, King Charles I was beheaded in London and Britain became a republic. When his eldest son, Charles, returned in 1651 to fight for his throne, he was crushed by the might of Cromwell’s armies. With 3,000 of his supporters lying dead and 10,000 taken prisoner, it seemed as if his dreams of power had been dashed. The next six weeks would form the most memorable and dramatic of Charles’ life and he suffered grievously when his cause seemed hopeless, even hiding in an oak tree – an event so fabled that over 400 English pubs are named Royal Oak in commemoration. Once restored to the throne as Charles II, he told the tale of his escapades to Samuel Pepys. In this gripping adventure story, Charles Spencer, using Pepys’s account and many others, retells this epic adventure.

The sinking of the White Ship in 1120 is one of the greatest disasters England has ever suffered. In one catastrophic night, the king’s heir and the flower of Anglo-Norman society were drowned and the future of the crown was thrown violently off course. In a riveting narrative, Charles Spencer follows the story from the Norman Conquest through to the decades that would become known as the Anarchy: a civil war of untold violence that saw families turn in on each other with English and Norman barons, rebellious Welsh princes and the Scottish king all playing a part in a desperate game of thrones.