Event Type: Branch

Takes Place: 12th January 2027

Time: 7pm

Venue: Room 1.09, Park Building, King Henry I St, Portsmouth, PO1 2BZ

Description: In 1649, Charles I was publicly executed outside the Banqueting House on Whitehall. Events then moved with giddying speed: ‘dangerous’ monarchy was abolished, the ‘useless’ House of Lords dismissed and England declared a republic – for the first and only time in its history. Ireland and Scotland were conquered and the soldier-statesman Oliver Cromwell was declared Lord Protector. It was a decade of unprecedented change and instability. But amid the tumult came innovation and opportunity. Previously unthinkable ideas about sovereignty and liberty were debated and implemented. Alternative forms of art and religion flourished. Philosophers talked radical politics in coffee houses, men and women devoured newsbooks, and experimental scientists scrutinised the world in wholly new ways. England’s distinctive republican experiment may have been short-lived, but it changed the course of British history. It reshaped the British Isles, reset the compact between the monarch and the people, and refashioned the story the British told – and continue to tell – about themselves. This talk is based on Alice Hunt’s critically acclaimed book, Republic, which was published by Faber in 2024 and selected as a book of the year by The Times and the Telegraph. Alice Hunt is Professor of Early Modern Literature and History at the University of Southampton. She has previously written about the Tudors and James I, and is the author of The Drama of Coronation (Cambridge, 2008). She often appears in the media discussing monarchy. She lives in Winchester.

How to book: Just turn up

Email: portsmouthhistorybranch@gmail.com

Lecturer: Professor Alice Hunt, University of Southampton

Region: South-East England

Branch: Portsmouth