Oliver Cromwell’s reputation is wildly different on the two sides of the Irish Sea.  In the United Kingdom, the debate focusses on whether he lived up to his professed values of liberty and parliamentary government or whether he ended becoming a tyrant, and a king in all but name, after fighting a war to get rid of Charles I. In Ireland, on the other, Cromwell is well-known as the bloodiest of all of Ireland’s English rulers – which is no mean feat.