Don't Blame Oliver : He didn't start it

Die gloriously or be forgotten forever, that was�the dilemma facing John Thurloe, Cromwell's�Secretary of State and spymaster. Make a defiant speech on the scaffold or save�your life by helping a Restoration propagandist�distort the history of the English Civil War and your role in it?Thurloe opted for survival while secretly penning a�counterblast to Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion.�His rollicking account reveals how he exploited the birth�of the popular newspaper and feminism's false dawn,�enabling a wart-nosed commoner to replace an anointed king. It captures the essence of civil war, where what�happens on street corners, in parlours, bedchambers, churches, taprooms and brothels is as important as�battlefield action.�Thurloe illuminates England's march to regicide through his adventures with Marchamont Nedham, the first great journalist; Nicholas Culpeper, the famous herbalist;�and Lady Carlisle, the inspiration behind Dumas's�Milady de Winter. It is the second in Will Coe's Stuart set.�