Faber & Faber

A Gambling Man is acclaimed biographer Jenny Uglow's portrait of Charles II and the first decade of the Restoration: a time of glamour and gossip, drama and risk, faction and crisis. Writing about a monarch is something of a change for her, as she explains in this Q and A.

What parallels can be drawn between the Restoration and the present day?

The Restoration is distant in time and strange to us in many ways - there is still a medieval sense about it. The dominance of religion in politics, and beliefs in witchcraft, or in alchemy, make it feel very remote. It is also a more obviously violent age, with duels and brawls and the horrific public executions, and paranoia about uprisings. But we still share this, sometimes to an alarming degree. 

Often you sense the same outlook, or problems - whether it be the pains and anxieties of love and family life or the uncertainty of trade and the perpetual atmosphere of risk. We feel the same anger and the desire to blame people when things go wrong, and seize (rightly) on corrupt private lives, whether it be MPs expenses or sleaze at court.

Above all we share the intense urge to hope that things will change. I was partly prompted to write this book because I was so moved by the scenes from 1989 when the regimes collapsed in Eastern Europe, and the moment of Charles II’s arrival in London, when euphoric crowds filled the streets seemed the only similar moment of sudden regime change in British history, whether for good or ill. And then, as I finished, Obama triumphed and Washington was filled with the same cheering, weeping crowds - all hoping for change. So part of my quest was to see what happened to those hopes, and whether it was really possible to defeat vested interests and heal conflicts.

Why did you choose to write about Charles II when previously you have written about the ‘common person’?

My previous books have actually been about the ‘uncommon person’, in that I believe everyone is different, but I have always written about people who attacked the system and tried to change it for the better, using their art - like Gaskell in her novels or Hogarth in his satires, or the radical scientists of the Lunar Society, or Thomas Bewick, trying to make us see the natural world, and defending the poor.  So this was a huge change for me. I wanted to try, for once, to see things from the centre, and Charles II is, I think, the last monarch who really had that degree of power, although already limited by parliament.

This allowed me to look at many different aspects of life in the nation and it was also an extraordinary journey trying to understand how this worked, and what ‘the court’ meant, and to try to fathom the elusive, charismatic character of Charles himself.

What was Charles II’s greatest gamble?

I don’t want to give the ‘plot’ of my book away, as readers will see him slowly moving towards this, but undoubtedly in the ten years I write about, from 1660-1670, his greatest gamble was the promise to Louis XIV that he would declare himself a Catholic in return for subsidies and support. If he had done so, he risked a new civil war. But I think, rather controversially, that he never intended to keep this promise: he made it less for the money, or for a degree of independence from parliament, than an insurance of safety for his brother - the future James II - who was already leaning towards Catholicism. This gamble was part of the secret Treaty of Dover in 1670, whose provisions remained secret for two hundred years.

Who had the best time during the first ten years of his reign? The worst?

In material terms, some people made fortunes, like the new bankers, or the merchants of the East India Company, but one group that did surprisingly well were the ordinary traders and shopkeepers and professional men of the provincial towns, which began to develop during this time.

In intellectual terms, the scientists flourished, with the founding of the Royal Society under Charles’s patronage, and the growth of a real network of experimenters.

And in London the theatres boomed, with the novelty of actresses on stage. Surprisingly I found that this was a good time for strong women - not just the royal mistresses and women of the court (who are fascinating), but women traders, printers, scientists and writers.

The worst experiences were those of the dissenters, who had believed Charles’s promise of ‘liberty to tender consciences’ and found that despite his attempts, their freedom of worship was curtailed worse than before, and many were imprisoned. Among these, the Quakers - who had already been persecuted under Cromwell - suffered particularly because of their refusal to take oaths. But out of this oppression of faith came great works, including Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Milton’s Paradise Lost - both of them, in different ways ‘political’ as well as religious works.

Do you look much at the world beyond the intense life of the royal court - and what, if anything surprised you?

I was constantly surprised - and yes, I look at the lives of dissenters, sailors, bankers, scientists, artists, actors, civil servants, farmers, tinkers. I was very moved by the experience of ordinary people in the great tragedies - the Plague and the Fire, and especially the Dutch wars, which we tend to forget when we think of losses in war. And I was surprised, I think, by how well informed people were, even far from court, by newsletters and gossip, and how passionately people felt about their rights and how easily they were swayed into a kind of hysteria - again, something that happens today.

Do you think your readers will end up being seduced by Charles, as so many of his contemporaries were?

Yes. He was a flawed, damaged man, of great personal warmth and charm, with a ruthless streak underneath ... but you will have to judge for yourselves.

Listen: Jenny Uglow on A Gambling Man [mp3]