In Civil War, Peter Ackroyd continues his dazzling retelling of England's history, painting a vivid portrait of the Stuart kings, from the ancestory of James I to the ignominious exile of his grandson James II. In it, Ackroyd lays before us the turbulent seventeenth century, most especially the civil war which led to the killing of the hapless Charles I and the despotic reign of England's only dictator, Oliver Cromwell. But here, too, is the cultural and social life of the period, notable for its extraordinarily rich literature, including Shakespeare's late masterpieces, Jacobean tragedy, the poetry of John Donne and Milton and Thomas Hobbes' great philosophical treaties, Leviathan. Above all, Ackroyd gives us a very real sense of ordinary English men and women, living their lives against a backdrop of constant disruption and uncertainty. 'Smoothly readable...In pages of limpid detail, Ackroyd makes history accessible to the layman' Ian Thomson, Independent