Event Type: CPD

Takes Place: 3rd June 2026

Time: 4pm - 5pm

Venue: Zoom

Description: This webinar will focus on the 1650s when England was – for the first and only time in its history – a republic. After the public execution of Charles I, ‘dangerous’ monarchy was abolished, parliament sought to settle a republican constitution and, under the leadership of the soldier-statesman, Oliver Cromwell, the entire British Isles were reshaped. The webinar will explain the political story, but it will also tell the lesser-known cultural story for, amid the tumult, came innovation and opportunity. Alternative forms of art and religion flourished. Satirists mocked MPs and the first English opera was staged. Philosophers talked radical politics in coffee houses and men and women devoured newsbooks. In Oxford, a group of experimental scientists scrutinised the world in new ways; they later became the Royal Society. And John Milton, disillusioned with the kind of republic England had become, wrote Paradise Lost. England’s distinctive republican experiment may have been short-lived, but it changed the course of British history, reset the compact between monarch and people and refashioned the story the British told – and continue to tell – about themselves. - Alice is Professor of Early Modern Literature and History at the University of Southampton. She has previously written about Tudor monarchy and James I, and is the author of The Drama of Coronation (Cambridge, 2008). Republic was published by Faber in 2024 and selected as a book of the year by The Times, the Telegraph and History Today.

How to book: Booking online via the Zoom link below.

Price: Free and exclusive to HA members

Email: events@history.org.uk

Website: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_COhozRCiSJ-JVvOnax56Lg

Lecturer: Alice Hunt, University of Southampton