Gurney has written a remarkable book… comprehensively researched, it is a notable addition to a highly successful Manchester University Press series. No historian dealing with this period can afford to ignore it.'R. C. Richardson, Southern HistoryThis work attempts to place the Diggers in context on a number of different levels: locally, nationally, politically, and intellectually. The aim is to improve our comprehension of the Diggers in their time and place without having Winstanley dominate the account; this is a laudable change of focus, as a prolific radical theorist can skew the analysis.