Through the story of a friendship that became the victim of political differences, the acclaimed author of Outlandish Knight delivers a rich and multilayered portrait of two eminent historians and the conflict that pulled them apart: the English Civil War.
Two old friends end up on opposite sides of the English Civil War, in this dazzling history from the acclaimed author of Outlandish Knight
At the Inns of Court, the intellectual, literary, and social heart of early 17th century London, many pivotal friendships were forged: few closer than that of Bulstrode Whitelocke and Edward (Ned) Hyde. Both young men were lively characters, industrious, well-connected, principled and optimistic. They dreamed of reforming the government of Charles I, a young court with age-old problems, by restoring the traditional harmony of Crown and Parliament. This is the story of how their hopes climbed, overreached, and fell into an abyss of relentless civil war.
This highly original, vivid and engaging book recreates the atmosphere, drama, players and ideas of what is arguably England’s (and Britain’s) most crucial and traumatic formative period. Through the stories of his two protagonists, Minoo Dinshaw shows how subtle religious and political differences, careful personal judgments, and mere happenstance combined to place these two friends, most reluctantly, on opposite sides in the English Civil Wars. They would both survive, unlike many thousands of others, into old age; both would become influential historians, shaping how we still understand the conflicts of their age. But their friendship, like the once hopeful country in which it had first flourished, would be forever changed: permanently marred by what both men believed to be senseless and unnecessary civil strife.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241312827
Number of pages: 544
Weight: 968 g
Dimensions: 240 x 162 x 35 mm
Dinshaw’s Friends in Youth is an exceptionally accomplished work: unfailingly eloquent, impressively researched, original in form and shrewdly alert to the mendacities in his subjects’ own accounts of events. It provides a richly detailed depiction of the brittle, brilliant world of pre-Civil War England and the forces that blew it apart... Dinshaw’s telling of this story is a bravura performance in historical narration. He has a novelist’s eye for place and character, and his elegantly crafted prose is bright with freshly minted phrases. - John Adamson, Literary Review
An outstanding dual biography... Dinshaw’s book is profoundly entertaining, startling in its depth, and a necessary cautionary tale about the human cost of political division - Daniel Brookes, The Telegraph
Humane and sympathetic… Many accounts of the civil wars are military histories. Dinshaw’s is refreshingly different…. This is a story about young men, the years that formed them and the way that history, still, makes us choose sides - Alice Hunt, The Times
A zest for gossip; antiquarianism; a delight in networks and family trees and piquant coincidences; a penchant for trains of thought which, rather than travelling compulsively forward like a railway train, stray about like a mule-train of hungry animals released into a field full of clover: these are unusual attributes for a chronicler of great public events. They make Dinshaw an informative and engaging historian, and an extremely idiosyncratic one - Lucy Hughes-Hallett, New Statesman
Moving as well as erudite Friends in Youth builds an eloquent butelegiac portrait of well-meaning moderates who tried to halt the slide towards violent division. - Boyd Tonkin, The FT
The triumph of Friends in Youth is that it doesn’t conceive of itself as a joint biography of two important men set against a background of “History”. Instead, it is History that is front and centre... [Dinshaw finds] fascinating human interest stories among the large cast of minor characters - Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian
An elegant and humane work of considerable literary and historical polish… a book ofengaging originality, covering one of the most traumatic and formative eras in British history - David Robinson, Country Life
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