Talk | The Civil Wars in 100 Objects – with Professor Andrew Hopper

Sunday 12 July 2026, 1 – 2pm | The Commandery

The civil wars between 1638 and 1651 were the most destabilising conflicts that the British and Irish peoples have ever endured. During these turbulent times ordinary people experienced a dizzying world of change. This book brings a history of objects approach to access this world of impoverishment, bereavement and suffering alongside exciting changes in religion, science, and politics. From propaganda newsbooks to household goods, through the personal possessions and weapons of the famous, to the architecture that defined religious and military change, these objects offer intimate connections with the past and shed new light on these tumultuous times.

Andrew Hopper is a historian of religion, politics and society in early modern England with research expertise on the British and Irish Civil Wars. He has two monographs ‘Black Tom’: Sir Thomas Fairfax and the English Revolution (Manchester University Press, 2007) and Turncoats and Renegadoes: Changing Sides in the English Civil Wars (Oxford University Press, 2012). He is currently working on his third monograph Widowhood and Bereavement in the English Civil Wars under contract with Oxford University Press, which is based on the AHRC-funded Civil War Petitions Project (2017-2022) for which he is Principal Investigator. Andrew is also the chair of the editorial board of Midland History, a patron of the Naseby Battlefield Project, and Academic Director of the National Civil War Centre, where he was co-curator of the Battle-Scarred exhibition.

£10. Book your place below. If you’d like to look around The Commandery, you can get half-price general admission from the shop on the day of the workshop.

This talk is part of a commemorative programme of events for the 375th anniversary of the Battle of Worcester, 1651.