Saw this on the Channel 4 Website:-


A Channel 4 season of films


Blood on Our Hands
Thursday 10 February 9pm

In 1640, England was so peaceful that only four people knew how to fire a mortar-cannon. Just eight years later, the nation had become a 17th-century Bosnia, engulfed by brutal violence in which families and communities tore themselves apart. England suffered, proportionately, greater losses than in the First World War. A newly free media stoked the fires of suspicion and religious hatred to push the nation, step by step, towards carnage.

Blood on Our Hands explores the real reasons behind the English Civil War and brings to life through the personal testimony of everyday people the story of how the nation turned on itself.

Brilliana, Lady Harley, under siege in her Herefordshire home, smuggles coded appeals for help to her teenage son in the army. Former journeyman tanner Sgt Wharton gets a taste for leadership only to die during his first battle. And humble wood turner, Nehemiah Wallington, one of a new breed of news junkies, watches the terrible human tragedy unfold.


Cromwell
Sunday 13 February 7.30pm

As England was plunged into civil war, from the turmoil one man emerged a hero: Oliver Cromwell. He rose from fenland farmer to become the most powerful commoner in British history, and he got there by very un-British means: revolution. His convictions led to the killing of a king, and gave Britain its only experience of republican rule.

However, there's more to Oliver Cromwell than the grim-faced Puritan of legend. This film, originally shown in 2001, reveals a troubled and contradictory man who dominated England as it underwent cataclysmic change in the bloodiest war fought on English soil.


The Trial of the King Killers
Sunday 17 February 9pm

On 29 January 1649, the English Civil War reached a dramatic and bloody climax: 59 Members of Parliament signed Charles I's death warrant. The next day the king was publicly beheaded. and for the first and only time in its history, England became a republic.

When Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, the republic died with him. Two years later, when Charles's son was restored to the throne as Charles II, anyone who had signed the warrant or had assisted in its creation became a marked man. Quite a few fled abroad. Arrested and charged with the crime of regicide, the remainder were put on trial. The gripping exchanges that emerged as they argued for their lives in court reveal the very different motives of the group of men who reached the decision to kill the king.

Taken from the original trial transcripts, Trial of the King Killers is a fact-based drama with a cast led by Corin Redgrave. It tells the bloody story of the most revolutionary episode in all of English history, when a king was brought before a people's court accused of war crimes, and of what happened to his executioners when the wheel of history turned again and they were called to account for their actions.


The War website

You will find a great overview of the English Civil Wars and Cromwell on this website, which has been revised for this season of films. All the resources have been checked and updated, and there is a new section – 'Counting the Cost' – which delineates the suffering and upheaval of the English in what was called 'the world turned upside down'.


Channel 4 History

Excellent. I saw that there was a programme next week but didn't realise it was part of a series.

Shame Mr W isn't on here still. He used to give good critiques of Civil War programmes.

OUr very own civil war where we missed the opportunity to have our very own revolution 150 years before the French. Instead we got Cromwell englands very own answer to ... he was a Dictator nothing more nothing less. THere was a revolution within the civil war which cromwell ruthlessly put down. there are elements here of chinas cultural revolution. at the end cromwell and his extreme puritan following were so unpopular - the monarchy came back with outstretched arms of the populace. General Monk saved the nation, ENglish Civil War an opportunity missed - i suppose we werent ready for it. it lead the way eventually for the rise of the british empire through britains becoming a maritime nation with a powerful navy.

Did the French do any better out of their revolution though? They ended up with Robespierre, the Terror and instead of re-installing the King went one better and got themselves an Emperor.

I thought the first programme, "blood on our hands" was very good, wasn't the Cromwell one a repeat though ?, still good all the same.

IN mitigation we can say that Napoleon was very ambitious some say to compensate for being short in stature! NOt only that as in England the monarchy was savagely despatched and before long came back in the guise of Napoleon because whoever as control of the military as control of the state - again just as in england with cromwell. Napoleon though did not bring back the privileges for the ruling classes. As often the radicalism in a revolution seems to have got distorted into nationalism which is a good way of uniting peoples of disparate opinion and wide socio econmic backgrounds - sacre blur! nous sommes francais! Beware the enemy at the gates (the british)

a little less conversation, a little more action

I found the programme boring and switched it off before the end, The grainy stills were arty but conveyed little of the real fervour of the opposing sides.
I think it would be wrong to say the revoltion was stifled by Cromwell, although he had no time for Leveller sentiments, doubtless regarding them as the loony lefties of his day. Women found a voice during and after the wars and as in other wars since, we see how they were ofen left in a position of running the family affairs and businesses in the absence of their husbands and learning that they were not the weaker vessels after all. The genie was out of the bottle. I don't love Cromwell's born again Christianity any more than I admire any other kind of religious thinking but he was a product of his time, and at least the various protestant sects began to embrace the idea that the interpretation of the bible was a thing between the reader and his god, rather than being told what to think by the established church with its vested intersts. Cromwell was left with few other options than to become a de facto dictator, given the weakness and corruption of successive parliaments, however, he did at least establish the rule of parliament and manged to create a situation where the monarchy would never again rule as though from divine right. This balance has served us well ever since.