The Image of the King; Charles I and Charles II

New York: Atheneum, 1979. First American Edition [stated], Presumed First Printing. Hardcover. 211, [5] pages. Chronological table. A Note on Sources. Notes. Index. Corner of fep clipped. Red ink underlining noted. DJ has some wear, tears, and soiling. Richard Ollard (1923–2007) was an English historian and biographer. He is best known for his work on the English Restoration period. He joined the Navy during the Second World War and won an exhibition to New College, Oxford at its conclusion. For twelve years from 1948 to 1959 Ollard taught history at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich in London. In 1960 he joined the publisher Collins as a senior editor, where he worked until his retirement in 1983. After his retirement from Collins he continued to research and publish widely. In 1992 he was awarded the Caird Medal by the Trustees of the National Maritime Museum. In 1997 he was joint winner of the Heywood Hill Prize for a lifetime's contribution to the pleasure of reading. Derived from a Kirkus review: Richard Ollard has re-examined the two, seemingly antithetical Charleses: aesthetic, principled Charles I and his frivolous, seize-the-day son--in terms of the images both consciously projected, the validity of those images, and what later generations have made of them. In his meaty text, Ollard pronounces the image and the reality of Charles I as one, the product of "rigorous self-discipline" and artistry. On the scaffold, he became what he wished to be; and the image endured--he would subsequently be venerated as a saint or denounced as an absolutist. Charles II, to Ollard, is also a self-definer. Charles was, Ollard writes, "a lazy, easygoing nature"; and in choosing Catholicism, he found "a form of Christianity that he could reconcile with his preferred way of life." More temperate, more balanced, more nuanced and original are his accounts of historians' representations of the two Charleses--from contemporary chroniclers through the Whig ascendancy to Scott, Macaulay, and Carlisle to modernists Gardiner and Ranke. It's provocative, angular history. Condition: Good / Good.

Keywords: Charles I, Charles II, Stuarts, Royalty, Restoration, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, Oliver Cromwell, James Ormonde

ISBN: 0689110065

[Book #78334]

Price: $50.00

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