Non-fiction: Behemoth, or The Long Parliament

Overview
Behemoth, or The Long Parliament offers a spirited reconstruction of the events and personalities that tore England apart during the 1640s. Written from a Royalist perspective, the narrative traces the unraveling of royal authority, the rise of factional politics, and the military and religious transformations that culminated in civil war and regicide. Hobbes treats the era as a case study of political decay, portraying a sequence of misjudgments, ambitions, and institutional failures that converted disputes into open conflict.
The book combines chronology, analysis, and anecdote. Hobbes arranges episodes around key moments, the summoning of the Long Parliament, the growth of parliamentary factions, the creation of armed parties, and the eventual dominance of military power, while repeatedly returning to the larger question of what structural and human factors made collapse possible.

Argument and Themes
Hobbes makes a sustained argument about the dangers of divided authority and competing claims to sovereignty. He attributes the collapse not merely to particular leaders or policies but to a systemic loss of a clear, supreme power able to command obedience and settle disputes. When church and state, army and parliament, and competing political "spirits" pursue incompatible aims, social order yields to turmoil. Hobbes emphasizes motives rooted in human psychology, ambition, desire for honor, fear, and the persuasive power of rhetoric, as engines that push groups toward escalation.
Religious conflict is central: ecclesiastical disputes and the proliferation of sectarian voices create a framework in which political questions are framed as moral absolutes, making compromise difficult. Hobbes also highlights the role of the armed party, arguing that once force enters politics as a regular instrument for agenda-setting, the logic of sovereignty is upended and self-interested leaders exploit military power to impose their will. The narrative repeatedly returns to the same lesson familiar from Hobbesian theory: without an unquestioned, overarching authority, rivalry becomes perpetual and destructive.

Narrative and Style
The tone is polemical and brisk, mixing forensic description with vivid portraiture and biting commentary. Anecdotes and character sketches humanize major figures while also serving rhetorical ends: vivid incidents illustrate broader principles about faction, ambition, and the contagion of dissent. Hobbes writes as both eyewitness interpreter and political theorist, turning historical detail into evidence for his claims about authority and disorder.
Language alternates between compact analytical sentences and lively episodes that dramatize turning points. The author's sympathies are evident in his choice of victims and villains, and his occasional sarcasm and moralizing underline the prescriptive thrust of the account: the events narrated are a warning as much as a record.

Historical Significance
Behemoth is important as a fusion of historical reportage and political philosophy that extends Hobbes's argument for strong centralized sovereignty into a concrete national crisis. It offers a counter-reading to Whig and parliamentary narratives by foregrounding the hazards of divided command and the social costs of ideological polarization. Historians value the book for its insights into the motives, rhetoric, and opportunism that shaped the revolutionary decade, even as they debate its partisan biases and factual emphases.
The work's lasting contribution lies in its diagnostic power: it models how a breakdown in recognized authority can amplify human passions and institutional weaknesses into prolonged violence. As a reflection on the English Civil War and on the conditions that make constitutional order fragile, Behemoth remains a provocative and influential statement about the political consequences of faction and the necessity, in Hobbes's view, of sovereign unity.