Sign up to FREE email alerts from Liverpool Echo - Weekly Politics Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

THE English Civil War has always fascinated me. But romantic images of Cavaliers and Roundheads obscure the reality of a horrible, dirty war that set father against son and neighbour against neighbour.

Some unspeakable horrors were committed in the march to establish the supremacy of parliament and puritan religious ideals.

The English civil wars in the mid 17th century and the Commonwealth period following it can often prove an insurmountable obstacle to those family historians who are lucky enough to trace their roots so far back.

Parish registers were in theory kept from 1538 but such was the turmoil in the Civil War period that you are indeed lucky if the events you are seeking were entered into a parish register at that time.

Self-styled ‘Lord Protector’ Oliver Cromwell was then – and remains to this day – something of an enigma. On the one hand he was at first reluctant to be drawn into the ‘king v parliament’ battle which preceded the Civil War, but once involved, the battle became his consuming passion, fired by his puritan zealotry.

The puritan hatred of all Christian images and associated church paraphernalia led to the wholesale destruction of much of England’s heritage. Churches were ransacked and priests went into hiding – little wonder that parish records went missing!

Much has been written about this defining time in English history and it is worth reading as much as you can about it to fully understand the scale of the changes which happened as a result of the Civil War and the conditions in which our ancestors lived.

Cromwell died on September 3, 1658, and under two years later Charles II was recalled from exile and the English monarchy was restored.

Oliver Cromwell’s funeral in November 1658 was a magnificent affair, witnessed by thousands and displaying all the trappings of a regal pageant. Yet less than three years later his corpse was removed from Westminster Abbey in 1661 and ‘executed’ at Tyburn along with other dead regicides.

Exhumed under cover of darkness and placed on a traitor’s spike at Westminster Hall, Cromwell’s head was to experience some remarkable adventures over the next three hundred years.

Falling into the hands of an opportunistic soldier, a failed comic actor, a money-grabbing publicist and some ‘cranial detectives’, the curio fascinated all who encountered it.

Now, a new book by Jonathan Fitzgibbons, published by The National Archives, tells the story of the head’s remarkable journey, blending gruesome humour with a compelling portrait of the great parliamentarian in life.

But it also explores his many talents and intriguing contradictions – country gentleman and farmer, brilliant military commander and cavalry leader, loving father and stern Puritan – and pays tribute to the passionate politician who sought to be remembered ‘warts and all’ by those he came to serve.

It gives a fascinating new take on Oliver Cromwell who remains the most contentious figure in English history.

Cromwell's Head by Jonathan Fitzgibbons (£12.99) is available from The National Archives on-line bookshop at http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/bookshop ISBN: 9781905615384