Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the English Civil War

John Stubbs's Reprobates charts the rise and fall of the Cavaliers before, during and after 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. Stubbs shows the reader just how the country was brought to one of the most destructive moments in its history. 'Dashing and daring, colourful, subtle and provocative . . . stuffed almost to bursting-point with character and incident. Feasting on poems, diaries, plays, masques, letters and biographies, Reprobates introduces us to . . . a 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 1630s'Independent 'Swaggeringly splendid...Stubbs is a brilliant expositor of poetry...one cannot resist being carried along the sheer boldness of the charge and the brilliance and élan of its execution' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph John Stubbs was born in 1977 and studied English at Oxford and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge where he completed a doctorate in 2005. Donne: The Reformed Soul was published in 2006 and won the Glen Dimplex Irish Writers' Centre New Writer of the Year and a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for non-fiction. It was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

About the Author :
John Stubbs is currently studying for his Phd at Cambridge University. Donne- The Reformed Soul is his first book.

Review :
Terrific . . . This is good roustabout stuff but there is subtlety here too. Stubbs show us, tactfully, that everything we thought we knew about the difference between cavaliers and roundheads is probably wrong An entertaining and ambitious work that intelligently binds together the art and the politics of mid-17th-century England. Its cast of characters could hardly be bettered A wonderful survey of the period...extraordinary snapshots of an era that makes our own seem mean, lazy and shamefully inarticulate Swaggeringly splendid...Stubbs is a brilliant expositor of poetry...one cannot resist being carried along the sheer boldness of the charge and the brilliance and élan of its execution The subtle but powerful light that Stubbs casts on [cavalier life in Stuart England] illuminates also the Puritanism of roundhead England. Stubbs writes that 'literary talent and psychological realism' of the cavalier poets makes them 'precious witnesses of an age'. They are among the qualities that make him one too Fascinating Excellent...affectionate but forensic...with considerable skill and insight, Stubbs brings to life an age, a literary movement and, for all their many faults, a group of individuals whose commitment to the king's cause helped to shape the history of England Intriguing and immaculately researched A thoughtful depiction of opposed ideas and mad mutual destruction Stubbs's fresh and resourceful prose keeps the reader engaged, while he finds countless ingenious ways to draw the literary and political elements together