Die gloriously or be forgotten forever, that was the dilemma facing John Thurloe, Cromwell’s Secretary of State and spymaster.

Make a defiant speech on the scaffold or save your life by helping a Restoration propagandist distort the history of the English Civil War and your role in it?

Thurloe opted for survival while secretly penning a counterblast to Lord Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion. His rollicking account reveals how he exploited the birth of the popular newspaper and feminism’s false dawn, enabling a wart-nosed commoner to replace an anointed king. It captures the essence of civil war, where what happens on street corners, in parlours, bedchambers, churches, taprooms and brothels is as important as battlefield action.