Cromwell, Our Chief of Men

Oof. This is the closest I have come to not finishing a book in a very long time. I read Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette a few years back and found it very lively and engaging, so I thought her biography of Oliver Cromwell might help me learn about a time period and person I knew virtually nothing about. Mistake! This is absolutely not meant for an audience not already relatively familiar with the time period and players, as there are frequent references to the political and religious issues of the times without giving a whole lot of context for the neophyte. I actually don't know how well I think it functions as a biography, with large portions being devoted to military campaigns...on the one hand, given that Cromwell rose to prominence (and in some cases, like his Irish campaign, infamy) through his leadership in the Army, it makes sense to give the reader some understanding of what seems to be a legitimate gift for martial strategy. On the other, I know I'm not the only one who avoids military histories because I find them incredibly dull. I ended up skimming through most of the battle descriptions just to keep on moving, and wishing for more of a focus on Cromwell's domestic life. The focus turns more to Cromwell's personality in the later stages of the book, and it becomes very clear that Fraser intends this to be a bit of a revisionary biography and that she thinks he has gotten a bad rap. Because I was annoyed at the book already, this backfired spectacularly and the more I read, the more I found him unsympathetic. There's a certain extent to which my failure to connect to this book is on me for expecting it to be something it was never trying to do, but even so I found it very boring and not at all enjoyable to read so I can't at all recommend it.