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.

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.

‘As rich, funny and teemingly peopled as Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time … Dinshaw writes with wit and elegance, and the most elegiac passages of Outlandish Knight evoke a lost society London and way of life’ Ben Judah, Financial Times

‘This dazzling young writer is a mine of fascinating, memorable and totally useless information… I have been riveted by this book from start to finish, and leave the reader with one word of advice. Watch Minoo Dinshaw. He will go far’ John Julius Norwich, Sunday Telegraph

The biography of one of the greatest British historians – but also of a uniquely strange and various man

In his enormously long life, Steven Runciman managed not just to be a great historian of the Crusades and Byzantium, but Grand Orator of the Orthodox Church, a member of the Order of Whirling Dervishes, Greek Astronomer Royal and Laird of Eigg. His friendships, curiosities and intrigues entangled him in a huge array of different artistic movements, civil wars, Cold War betrayals and, above all, the rediscovery of the history of the Eastern Mediterranean. He was as happy living in a remote part of the Inner Hebrides as in the heart of Istanbul. He was obsessed with historical truth, but also with tarot, second sight, ghosts and the uncanny.

Outlandish Knight is a dazzling debut by a writer who has prodigious gifts, but who also has had the ability to spot one of the great biographical subjects. This is an extremely funny book about a man who attracted the strangest experiences, but also a very serious one. It is about the rigours of a life spent in the distant past, but also about the turbulent world of the twentieth century, where so much that Runciman studied and cherished would be destroyed.