January 1649, Whitehall. A king steps onto the scaffold. Moments later, Charles I is dead... tried and executed by his own subjects. For the first time in its history, England is without a monarch.
What follows is one of the most radical experiments in British history. The House of Lords is abolished. The monarchy is swept away. England, Scotland, and Ireland are declared a republic, a commonwealth built on revolutionary ideals. But was it truly a revolution? And why did this bold new republic collapse within a decade?
For this Not Just The Tudors...Late, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb hosts a panel of leading historians - Dr Jonathan Healey, Dr Miranda Malins, and Prof. Ronald Hutton - to explore the often overlooked interregnum of the 1650s. Together, they dig into the realities behind the rhetoric: the role of Oliver Cromwell, the tensions between army and parliament, and the limits of radical change in a deeply divided nation.
Was England’s republic doomed from the start, or was it a missed opportunity? And did this failed experiment plant the seeds for later revolutions?
Join us as we revisit a turbulent decade of ambition, ideology, and contradiction... and ask why England’s revolution didn’t last.
Up Next in Not Just the Tudors...Lates
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What if the Gunpowder Plot Succeeded?...
November 5th, 1605... beneath the shadowed vaults of the Houses of Parliament, a man waits with 36 barrels of gunpowder by his side, and a plan that could change the fate of a nation forever.
Then, in a moment, it's over... Guy Fawkes is caught and the plan thwarted. But what if he wasn't?
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Henry VIII on Film - Not Just the Tud...
Few British monarchs loom as large in the public imagination as King Henry VIII. Straddling the line between man and myth, he is best known for his infamous six marriages and his penchant for beheadings. But where does fiction meet fact? In cinema and on television, he has been portrayed by a hos...
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Becoming Elizabeth: Not Just the Tudo...
How do you tell the story of one of the most interesting and tumultuous times in history - when Henry VIII died, leaving three children from three different mothers?
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