Poets who knew Cromwell well reveal they were both ambiguous and ambivalent about his unprecedented role in English history.
As heard by us
Cromwell is treated as both a political operator and a literary problem, with admiration and alarm kept in view.
The episode treats Oliver Cromwell as someone poets could not ignore, much less simply praise. It follows Edmund Waller as he tries to write Cromwell into a panegyric, and the tension between survival and allegiance stays at the center.
Why you'd press play
Press play if you want Cromwell seen through poems written to praise power.
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