The Civil Wars Experienced is an exciting new history of the civil wars, which recounts their effects on the 'common people'. This engaging survey throws new light onto a century of violence and political and social upheaval
By looking at personal sources such as diaries, petitions, letters and social sources including the press, The Civil War Experienced clearly sets out the true social and cultural effects of the wars on the peoples of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and how common experiences transcended national and regional boundaries. It ranges widely from the Orkneys to Galway and from Radnorshire to Norfolk.
The Civil Wars Experienced explores exactly how far-reaching the changes caused by civil wars actually were for both women and men and carefully assesses individual reactions towards them. For most people fear, familial concerns and material priorities dictated their lives, but for others the civil revolutions provided a positive force for their own spiritual and religious development.
By placing the military and political developments of the civil wars in a social context, this book portrays a very different interpretation of a century of regicide and republic.

'Undoubtedly Martin Bennett provides some important new perspectives on the conflict the twelve pages of bibliography listing manuscript collections and printed primary sources reveals many unused or at least under-exploited sources Bennett goes a great distance towards bringing these to light his is indeed an important book.' - Journal of Military History

'This well-researched study...throws new light upon the ways in which the wars of the mid-seventeenth century impacted upon a range of urban and rural communities.' - Peter Gaunt, Urban History March 2003

Martyn Bennett is Reader in History at Nottingham Trent University.