Antonia Fraser's richly detailed biography ["Cromwell: The Lord Protector"] does full justice to Cromwell's public career. She is particularly good on Ireland, excusing nothing that cannot be excused, but explaining the irrational fear and hatred of the "Popish Irish butchers," intensified by years of pamphlet propaganda, which lay behind his excesses. She is also perceptive in her study of his political doubts and changes of opinion in the critical middle years.

Though she treats his actions fully, Antonia Fraser's true interest lies elsewhere. She has sought, she says, "to rescue the personality" of Cromwell, to detach what he truly was from the almost overwhelming weight of 17th-century scholarship which now surrounds him and his epoch. To rescue his personality? It is the modern phrase. In Cromwell's time they might have substituted the word "soul," for this is very much what she means.

Let it be said at once...