Oliver Cromwell was a tyrant, a repressed religious bigot who murdered a king, ruthlessly ended the world's first socialist movement and had grand designs to make himself King Oliver I. Oliver Cromwell was a superb man - patriotic, a magnificent warrior and civilised with a tremendous sense of humour, a bursting conscience in matters of state and religion and personally unambitious. Which assessment even approaches the truth? Views of Oliver Cromwell vary as much today as when Parliament asked him to become King in 1657. How do modern historians view the parliamentarian who some have called the greatest Englishman? With Christopher Hill, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Blair Worden, Ivan Roots and Brendan Bradshaw

Feature: page 4 and Info: page 76