Although many books have been written claiming to be 'new' histories of the Civil War in the past hundred years, the basic narrative they have offered has hardly changed. None has returned comprehensively to the sources and to the mass of new evidence that awaited discovery in private collections and foreign archives. John Adamson's ground-breaking book offers the first genuinely new account of England's last - and bloodiest - internal war.

As a sequel to the widely acclaimed THE NOBLE REVOLT, which described the political crisis that brought about the overthrow of Charles I, THE WAR OF THE REALMS picks up the story as it reaches its bloody climax. Adamson's gripping narrative focuses on the struggle between Parliamentarians and Royalists to realize their rival political visions of Britain's future through war, diplomacy and political intrigue. But this is much more than a sequel. Adamson looks beyond the world of Westminster and the court to examine the experience of war, its impact on individual lives and families, and - perhaps most importantly of all - its massive long-term influence on the size and power of the British state, the consequences of which endure today.

The book's originality and freshness of approach is driven by a truly astonishing number of archival discoveries. Personalities and motives are revealed with detail and clarity where earlier historians have had to resort to speculation and guesswork, and the dramatis personae of the English Civil War are wholly redefined. Cromwell, whose role has been wildly exaggerated by historians, recedes to the supporting part which, in reality, he played for much of the war. The real political powerbrokers of the day, the aristocratic grandees who dominated politics on both sides of the conflict, emerge from the shadows here for the first time. Old orthodoxies are overturned. THE WAR OF THE REALMS presents a magnificent new account of Britain's greatest-ever internal political crisis that is both compellingly argued and beautifully told.