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In these fractured times, one great question is how friends and family can believe in opposing ideas without falling out.
Dinshaw tells the true story of two lawyers and best friends – Edward Hyde and Bulstrode Whitelocke – who were literally two little boys taking opposite sides in the English civil war.
Dinshaw is helped enormously by Hyde and Whitelocke both surviving and both writing extensive accounts of their experiences.
Hyde fought for Charles, Whitelocke for Cromwell – neither obsessively. Both were moderates, joining up out of sorrow as much as anger. This is history drenched in colour, from London inns to realistic descriptions of the flailing of combat.
It has surely been optioned already but if this were a Hollywood pitch then the scene that’s missing is the two of them meeting after the war and coming to terms with all that happened.
Instead, it trails off after abortive peace talks and feels somehow unfinished. But then, history is never as satisfying as the TV version.
