Faber snaps up Alice Hunt's 'thrilling' history of the 1650s

Faber has snapped up Republic, Alice Hunt’s history of the 1650s, the decade that followed the execution of King Charles I.

Neil Belton, former editorial director at Faber, acquired world English language rights from Catherine Clarke at Felicity Bryan Associates. Fiona Crosby, senior commissioning editor at Faber, will be editing the book.

"England’s unique republican experiment – imposed on Scotland and Ireland, too – may have been short-lived, but it has had a lasting impact on British monarchy, politics, religion and culture and on the story the British continue to tell about themselves," the synopsis says. "It is a period that, for a long time, history chose to forget or recalled as a failure. Here, in this year-by-year account, and in rich and thrilling detail, Alice Hunt brings the republic and its extraordinary cast of characters, from politicians to poets and prophets, back to life."

Hunt is a professor of Early Modern literature and history at the University of Southampton and the author of The Drama of Coronation (Cambridge University Press). She commented: "Beyond Oliver Cromwell, many of the men and women who lived during the republic remain relatively unknown, and their achievements underplayed. This is the story of what Britain’s republic was really like – of why it went wrong and what it also got right."

Crosby added: "Alice’s dazzling biography not only charts the extraordinary decade England spent as a republic, through all its twists and turns, but also illuminates the enduring impact these turbulent years had on politics, monarchy and the nation’s soul."