Ivan Alan Roots (3 March 1921, Maidstone, Kent – 8 February 2015) was a British historian, known as the author of The Great Rebellion (1966) and a leading expert on Oliver Cromwell.
At Oxford he was tutored by Christopher Hill and developed an interest in the history of England in the 17th century, especially in the period 1649–1660 and the Protestant radicals known as the Diggers.
With Maurice Goldsmith, of Exeter’s Politics department, he established The Rota, a publishing venture that made available, in the days before the internet, facsimile copies of scarce 17th-century tracts and books.
He also wrote a number of influential articles on aspects of Cromwellian governance and was responsible for fresh imprints of two major texts of the 1640s and 50s.
[3]Roots was for 12 years, from the late 1970s onwards, president of the Cromwell Association (which was started in 1937 by Isaac Foot).