When King Abdullah of Jordan visited Britain in 1946, Prime Minister Attlee showed him a portrait of Cromwell and remarked that in his opinion the great Puritan was a remarkable man. Sincerely shocked, Abdullah exclaimed: "But he was the man who cut off the King's head!"
Abdullah Ibn Hussein, scion of the proud Hashemite family, lived in his youth in "honorable captivity" i.e., as a hostage for the good behavior of his powerful relatives, at the court of Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid, who cut off heads with considerably less thought than Cromwell ever gave the matter. But Abdullah preferred to satisfy his...
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