On a rainy Bank Holiday in the spring of 2011 I went on a guided tour of Winchester Cathedral. Our guide led us very ably around the building's beautiful exalted interior, at one point pausing with his back toward the very large stained glass west window. He told us that we were looking at a reconstruction, since the window's medieval glass had been destroyed by parliamentarians at the time of the civil war. As an aside, he then noted that during the civil war Hampshire had been predominantly ‘Roundhead, or “Labour”’.

I remember this moment vividly because it was the first time in nearly four years of having lived in England, and in almost seven years of thinking about early modern historical culture, that I had witnessed an unsolicited (and unguarded) reference to the civil wars. Moreover, it seemed to me that here was an obvious example of the wars' presence within popular memory. In our guide's mind, the political, social and religious divisions of mid-seventeenth-century England paralleled the partisanship of (post-) modern British political life. It is probably not a view shared by the Cathedral's Dean and Chapter, at least not publicly. Interestingly, visitors to the historical section of Winchester Cathedral's website in the spring of 2011 will have found no reference to Roundheads or parliamentarian iconoclasts.

This book's examination of one pre-modern nation's attempt to make peace with its violent past and with itself contributes to our understanding of the use and misuse of the past in contemporary life.