OLIVER CROMWELL Commander in Chief

This second installment brings British historian Ronald Hutton's magisterial biography of Oliver Cromwell up to 30 hours of listening time. It's a daunting undertaking for most listeners--but still short of Cromwell's term as Lord Protector of Britain 1653-58. Even so, there is much to recommend here. Narrator Nigel Patterson's fine enunciation is silken to the ear, bringing clarity and purpose to a narrative that is itself richly detailed and gracefully composed. Rich, too, are the issues and parallels that Cromwell's divided era poses--that time of division and civil war, legislative disarray, and swift social change. Not every listener may want to venture as far into this complex seventeenth-century tangle, but the rewards and satisfactions accrue with every hour. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2025]