Having used books from the same series on both Elizabethan England and Stalin’s Russia for some years now, I was pleased to see the latest offering covered England 1625-1660. There are many excellent A-level textbooks covering this period but not perhaps anything offering as clear an overview as this one. Particularly pleasing is the way each chapter asks a key question and addresses the surrounding historiography.

We find that many of our students are still thinking ‘with their twentieth century heads on’ at the start of A/S – and who could blame them seeing as years 9-11 is all twentieth century – and, to start with, struggle with the Personal Rule of Charles I module. This book has proved a great help in overcoming this lack of confidence and inability to see the wood for the trees by outlining areas of key debate, explaining historians’ views and simplifying some of the quite complicated concepts that can arise during this period. Our department have found the book stimulates interest and allows students a clearer view of the period. The focus routes and other tasks set are more often than not of great value, and whilst individual teachers prefer to set tasks to suit their desired outcomes and exam specifications, the book-set tasks have much worth.

Although I have said that the book gives a clear overview, it also covers all of the key areas of this period in great depth – some might say too much for A/S in places – but this allows the gifted and talented pupils, and even the teacher if their seventeenth century history is a little rusty, the opportunity for wider reading in their own time. The book also neatly summarises historians’ views, which can act as a good starting point before setting students to work on finding out more about what a particular historian believes and why. This is particularly useful for any papers covering historiography – such as the OCR Historical Investigations paper on Cromwell.

I would recommend this book to anyone teaching the reign of Charles I, the Civil Wars and/or Cromwell. It would be best used as a core textbook where the key areas can be simplified and discussed – at a push, a whole paper could be taught from it.