Following a youth of poverty and bitter exile after his father s execution, the ousted king first challenged, then made his magnificent escape from, Cromwell s troops before he was eventually restored to his throne in triumph in 1660.

Spanning his life both before and after the Restoration, Antonia Fraser s lively and fascinating biography captures all the vitality of the man and the expansiveness of the age.

Detailed, sympathetic, and admirably readable ECONOMIST