Volume 24, Number 10 · June 9, 1977
Political Animal
By Christopher Hill
Cromwell
by Roger Howell Jr.
Little, Brown, 269 pp., $8.95
All historians look at the past through spectacles of the present: those who believe themselves to be totally 'objective' are often the most naïve in their acceptance of the values of the world in which they live. That is why history has continually to be rewritten: it is not the past that changes, but the present, and with it our attitudes to the past. We can smile when we read Macaulay describing Oliver Cromwell as a middle-class Englishman of the nineteenth century: 'No sovereign ever carried to the throne so large a portion of the best qualities of the middling orders, so strong a sympathy with the feelings and interests of his people…. He had a high, stout, honest English heart.' Carlyle, worried by the threat of Chartism, depicted Cromwell as the hero who had saved his world from both absolutism and democracy. Even S.R. Gardiner called him 'the greatest because the most typical Englishman of all time.' In the 1930s and 1940s W.C. Abbott compared Cromwell to Hitler and Stalin, and Dr. Ashley depicted him as 'the conservative dictator.' There are almost as many Cromwells as there are biographers—and that is bidding high.
Review, 2590 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |