Cromwell's career is traced in great detail [in Cromwell: Our Chief of Men; published in the United States as Cromwell: The Lord Protector]: from the first dishevelled appearance of the rough Huntingdonshire squire in the House of Commons, with blood specks on his neckband, through his victories at Marston Moor Naseby and Preston, to his apotheosis as Lord Protector. At all points the author reveals a transparent desire to be accurate and fair. [Antonia Fraser] deals scrupulously with those aspects of Cromwell's life which still arouse deep passion, notably the execution of Charles I and the massacres at Drogheda and Wexford. She also emphasises dimensions of the man which centuries of royalist propaganda have tended to efface….

Antonia Fraser has an eye for picturesque detail and likes a good story. She devotes a lot of space to the numerous legends which still surround Cromwell's career, some of which...