December 27, 2001
The Times
Civil War re-enacted for viewers
by Adam Sherwin, Media Reporter

Rupert Everett will play Charles I, vanquished by Tim Roth’s Cromwell in a £15 million British film. On BBC2, a Civil War series will begin next month, presented by Tristram Hunt, 27, who promises to bring the gory drama of the battle of Marston Moor, the Irish Rebellion and the execution of Charles I into the nation’s living rooms.

History has become a “sexy” subject for filmmakers, with Professor David Starkey’s Channel 4 series on Elizabeth I and Henry VIII attracting more viewers than the hit comedy Friends.

The 1998 film Elizabeth, about the monarch’s early years and starring Cate Blanchett, took £50 million at the box office. The Civil War also proved one of the most popular sections of Simon Schama’s BBC series The History of Britain, and Natural Nylon, the film company backed by Jude Law and Ewan McGregor, believes that the revolutionary events contain all the elements of a box-office hit.

Cromwell and Fairfax, which begins shooting at Hampton Court Palace next month with Mike Barker as director, focuses on the King’s final days and the struggle to build a new state in place of the defeated monarchy.

Dougray Scott plays Thomas Fairfax, the general of the parliamentary armies, whose victories at Marston Moor in 1644 and Naseby the year after brought the war to an end.

Although the battles of the 1640s cost a quarter of a million lives, feature film producers have shied away from the subject. No big-screen attempt has been made since 1970 when Richard Harris played Cromwell and Alec Guinness played Charles in the ill-fated Cromwell.

Kevin Loader, the new film’s producer, said: “I am often shocked how little people know about this fascinating period. Tim Roth will play a very contemporary, edgy Cromwell, and with Rupert Everett and Dougray Scott we have the best British talent to bring this period to a new audience.”

The script, by Jennie Mayhew, will focus on Charles’s trial for treason and the psychological struggle between Cromwell and Fairfax, friends on the battlefield who are driven apart by the demands of building a new English state.

Everett’s Charles will be a dignified figure who clings to his belief in the “divine right” of kings to his execution. Cromwell is presented as an “iron-willed military genius”.

Mr Loader said: “The film raises a question very topical in Afghanistan — after the civil war, how can a new government be formed to unite a nation?” Dr Hunt’s series aims to explode the myth of an “English” civil war. He presents a conflict, provoked by religious disputes rather than taxation, that spread through England, Scotland and Ireland, the resonances of which can still be heard.

“I go to Portadown during the Orange Order marches and explain their roots in the events of the 1640s,” Dr Hunt said. “We will be re-creating famous battles, but the basic issues are as relevant today — the role of the monarchy and how to govern the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland as a united entity.”

Sex inevitably plays a major role in popular history and Dr Hunt has a ready-made femme fatale in Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. He said: “Her Roman Catholic faith made her an object of suspicion in England and this contributed to the rebellion.”

Dr Hunt is being marketed by the BBC as “the naked historian”. He has engineered a spat with Dr Starkey, unfavourably comparing the other’s approach to history to that of a “gossip columnist”.

If popular history contains many elements of soap opera, its public faces are learning to adopt the same marketing techniques in the battle to attract viewers.

Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd