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Book of the Week: Jenny Uglow - A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration

Book of the Week: Jenny Uglow - A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration: Episode 1

Factual: History

A Gambling Man - Charles II and The Restoration

Episode 1

Jenny Uglow - A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Jenny Uglow - A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration, Episode 1

In May 1660, after years of exile in Holland, Charles II was reinstated as sovereign.

4 Extra Debut. After years of exile in Holland, Charles II was reinstated as sovereign. The Restoration was a time of glamour and gossip, drama and risk, faction and crisis.

Michael Maloney reads from the book by Jenny Uglow.

Charles II was thirty when he crossed the Channel in fine May weather in 1660. His Restoration was greeted with maypoles and bonfires, like spring after long years of Cromwell's rule. But there was no going back, no way he could 'restore' the old. Certainty had vanished. The divinity of kingship fled with his father's beheading. 'Honour' was now a word tossed around in duels. 'Providence' could no longer be trusted. 

As the country was rocked by plague, fire and war, people searched for new ideas by which to live. 

Exactly ten years later Charles would stand again on the shore at Dover, laying the greatest bet of his life in a secret deal with his cousin, Louis XIV. 

The Restoration decade was one of experiment: from the science of the Royal Society to the startling role of credit and risk, from the shocking licence of the court to the failed attempts at toleration of different beliefs. Negotiating all these, Charles, the 'slippery sovereign', layed odds. Yet while his grandeur, his court and his colourful sex life were on display, his true intentions lay hidden. 

A Gambling Man is a portrait of Charles II, exploring his elusive nature through the lens of these ten vital years - and a portrait of a vibrant, violent, pulsing world, in which the risks the king took forged the fate of the nation, on the brink of the modern world.

Written by Jenny Uglow
Read by Michael Maloney
Abridged by Libby Spurrier

Producer: Joanna Green
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Michael Maloney reads from Jenny Uglow's account of the restoration of Charles II in 1660.

Michael Maloney reads from Jenny Uglow's account of the restoration of Charles II in 1660 and events in the decade that followed

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