Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the English Civil War

From disastrous foreign forays to syphilitic poets, from political intriguing to ambitious young playwrights keen to curry favour with the king, John Stubbs brings alive the vibrant cast of characters that were at the centre of the English Civil War.  Feasting on poems, diaries, plays, masques, letters and biographies, Reprobates introduces us toa flamboyant parade of chancers, dreamers, turncoats, heroes, idiots and hedonists who grab the reader's shoulders and force a drink on us as if in some dim-lit, tallow-smoked tavern of the 1630's. Stubbs shows the reader just how the country was brought to one of the most destructive moments in its history