`The curse of Cromwell" used to be a stock phrase in Ireland, though history teaching has changed since then and he no longer seems quite the ogre that he did. This history of Cromwell's Irish invasion is largely an attempt to prove that he was less sanguinary than was thought in his campaigning and that the massacre of Drogheda, in particular, has been much exaggerated. In general, he seems to have followed most of the military conventions of his time, though that time was a brutal one and the Thirty Years' war - to which Cromwell belonged in spirit, even if he never fought in it - was a savage affair. No doubt a nationalist myth has grown up around his behaviour in Ireland, yet he was in most respects a very ruthless man to whom the lives of "Papists" were never of much account. (After all, the Irish troops who fought in England for King Charles were usually massacred without pity, along with their women and camp-followers.) So revisionism can easily go too far in this case, but the book is well researched and persuasively argued.