The English Rebel: One Thousand Years of Trouble-making from the Normans to the Nineties - Hardcover

'A superb losers' history of England - two-thirds of the main characters end up on the scaffold or the gallows. With narrative verve and delicious detail David Horspool shows how, far from our island story being a smooth progress towards parliamentary democracy and the rule of law, the rebels had to water the Tree of Liberty with their blood at regular intervals.'
Ferdinand Mount

'An unfailingly lucid, immensely readable, and above-all clear-eyed account of an indomitable strand in our national story.'
David Kynaston

'In The English Rebel, David Horspool has dug deep into one of the richer seams of the country's historical compost. His is a fascinating theme, lucidly developed, which examines the use of physical and moral force in the pursuit of dissent - and all stages in between.'
Peter Hennessy

'The exciting, accessible story of the many moments in which people organised themselves to change things - and sometimes succeeded. From resisters to the Norman conquest to the women of Greenham, Horspool uncovers the hearty, dangerous energy of British politics, covered over for years by the myth that we are a nation of shopkeepers; nonsense! We are a nation of rebels, whose history has been shaped by stirrers of every kind. I learned from every story.'
Diane Purkiss