Jonathan Healey

Jonathan Healey is a historian at Oxford. The Blood in Winter: A Nation Descends, 1642 is out now.

Blood and Confusion: England’s Republic

Jonathan Healey, 10 July 2025

Few places​ celebrated the Restoration in 1660 with more enthusiasm than Sherborne in Dorset. It was late May, and crowds piled into the tight streets of the ancient castle town. Wine flowed and hogsheads of beer and baskets of white bread were put out for the poor. Some five thousand troops gathered, on horse and foot, as Sir John Strangways, a local royalist, proclaimed the end of eleven...

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