The Blood in Winter cover art

The Blood in Winter

The thrilling story of England's descent into civil war

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About this listen

Bloomsbury presents The Blood in Winter by Jonathan Healey, read by Mark Meadows.

‘You could hardly find a more engrossing or exciting story’ Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times
‘Rollicking’ Telegraph
‘Gripping’ Financial Times
‘History as it should be told’ Alice Loxton

A thrilling political history about the months that brought England to the cusp of civil war, from the acclaimed author of The Blazing World

A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR: THE TIMES/SUNDAY TIMES, TELEGRAPH AND HISTORY TODAY

A nation on the cusp of war.

A king ousted from his capital by the people.

A society on the brink of collapse.

Why did the English Civil War break out? From Jonathan Healey comes a thrilling portrait of an English people’s great political awakening, and of a nation that splintered into bloodshed at a terrifying speed.

©2025 Dr Jonathan Healey (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Europe Great Britain England War Royalty Civil War Emotionally Gripping Winter

Critic Reviews

This is everything a history book should be. Healey fills his narrative with portraits of extraordinary characters, which combine to make his account of Britain’s descent into Civil War a truly human one. Nothing could be more relevant to us now, in this political moment, than a history like The Blood in Winter that gives an example of how fast and almost accidentally nations can fall apart, and the individual decisions of conscience that must be made along the way’ (OPHELIA FIELD, author of The Favourite)
Healey is in the vanguard of modern popular history, and The Blood in Winter charges like a squadron of cavalry through the tumultuous year that led to the civil wars, giving equal billing to the people’s politics that shook the streets of London and the arguments and doubts that filled the houses of parliament (NADINE AKKERMAN, author of Invisible Agents)
A superb history. Healey has the rare ability to make the seventeenth century accessible without being patronising, and to cover big and important themes while keeping the reader royally entertained (SAM FREEDMAN, author of Failed State)
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