Radio Times: Review by:; Alison Graham

He was a bit of a bollocks,” says one Irish lady of Oliver Cromwell. It’s a masterly understatement considering she’s talking in Drogheda, site of an infamous massacre carried out by Cromwell’s New Model Army in 1649.

In another engrossing chapter of British history, told in the words of those involved, Michael Wood explores the British Civil Wars, the almighty conflict that set community against community and town against town throughout Britain and Ireland. In London, he stands amid the Occupy London tents, the modern day-equivalent, he says, of the Levellers and Diggers movements that grew out of the Civil Wars.

About this programme

6/8. Michael Wood explores how civil war split Britain during the 17th century, beginning his journey in Dublin, where he examines artefacts of the 1641 Irish Rebellion, before travelling to Co Down to find out about the Ulster-Scots. Back in England, he explains how communities in the West Midlands were divided by the violent conflict between Parliament and the Crown, and visits a local history project that is unearthing evidence from a Cornish battlefield. He also charts the origins of revolutionary movements including the Levellers and Diggers, which he believes laid the foundations for modern British democracy.