World Turned Upside Down

'His finest work and one that was both symptom and engine of the conceptof "history from below" ... Here Levellers, Diggers, Ranters,Muggletonians, the early Quakers and others taking advantage of thecollapse of censorship to bid for new kinds of freedom were given centrestage' Times Higher Education

In 'The World Turned Upside Down' Christopher Hill studies the beliefsof such radical groups as the Diggers, the Ranters, the Levellers andothers, and the social and emotional impulses that gave rise to them.The relations between rich and poor classes, the part played bywandering 'masterless' men, the outbursts of sexual freedom, the greatimaginative creations of Milton and Bunyan - these and many otherelements build up into a marvellously detailed and coherent portrait ofthis strange, sudden effusion of revolutionary beliefs.

'Establishedthe concept of an "English Revolution" every bit as significant andpotentially as radical as its French and Russian equivalents' Daily Telegraph

'Brilliant ... marvellous erudition and sympathy' David Caute, New Statesman

'Thisbook will outlive our time and will stand as a notable monument to theman, the committed radical scholar, and one of the finest historians ofthe age' The Times Literary Supplement

'The dean and paragon of English historians' E.P. Thompson