Charles I and the Aristocracy, 1625-1642, Richard Cust, Cambridge University Press, 2013, 350 pp., £65.00, ISBN 978-1-107-00990-5

An innovative and important study that emphasises Charles I's conservatism in conceiving of the aristocracy as the principal support of royal authority. Cust suggests that this policy worked, as it provided Charles with the capability to go to war with the Scots without turning to Parliament, and, subsequently, to build up a Royalist party able and willing to compete with the Parliamentarians in 1642. The principal disappointment is a serious failure to set this in a wider European, indeed global context, but Cust's study is very important for our understanding of Charles I and of aristocratic culture in the period. Argues that Charles' attempt to seize the hostile parliamentarians and his subsequent flight from London undid the important gains that he had made in the autumn of 1641.