Skinning cats and writing national histories are pretty much two of a kind. It’s possible to examine a nation’s story from any number of angles, and most have already been covered – political, social, military and so on.

Now David Horspool has had the novel idea of taking a brisk canter through English history and putting the spotlight on those radicals who have helped to make the country what it is today: not the merry England of patient gentlefolk refusing to say boo to a goose, but an awkward squad of occasional misfits standing up for common rights.

From the outset Horspool insists that he is concerned with English history and, while he is correct to make this assertion, it does mean that certain “British” elements are truncated (Scotland’s part in standing up to Margaret Thatcher’s infamous poll tax in the 1980s) or are not mentioned at all (the impact of the Red Clydesiders on Westminster in 1922). On the whole, though, Horspool is within his rights to keep his focus on English history because down the years there has been a strong and ever-present radical element which has helped to fashion the kind of country England became in modern times. There might not have been much of the “up the rebs!” truculence which propels Irish history, or the thrawn sense of independence found north of the border, but England has still produced its fair share of individuals who were prepared to stand up and be counted when they felt that a point of political morality was at stake.

On this score Horspool is particularly good on what might be called the usual suspects – the Peasants’ Revolt and the Levellers, for instance – but he also has an eye for unexpected detail. During the insurrection against King Richard II’s introduction of a poll tax in 1381, William Walworth is generally given an honour-able mention for bringing things to a head by stabbing the rebel leader Wat Tyler; but, as Horspool shrewdly makes clear, the Lord Mayor of London was not just protecting the king. Walworth, a self-made commoner, “couldn’t let a jumped-up serf dictate terms to his superiors”.

He is also good on the conflict which broke out between the English parliament and King Charles I, seeing it as a quarrel which had reasonably clearly defined aims, yet ended with many of those aims unfulfilled. With good reason he is sympathetic to the Levellers, who attempted to give the revolution a sense of coherence, and Oliver Cromwell receives due praise for permitting the Putney Debates. Although these came to nothing, in that no concrete decisions were taken, the debate did produce a vivid picture of the aspirations of 17th-century political thinkers who were reaching towards the concept of universal manhood suffrage. Amongst these were Thomas Rainsborough, who uttered the noble words: “I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he.”

It is fascinating and instructive to compare this event with Horspool’s description of the struggle for the campaign for women’s votes in the 19th and 20th centuries. In that sense, there is a great deal of continuity in Horspool’s story with more recent rebels, such as the Luddites and Chartists, seeing themselves as acting in the same tradition as the people who followed Tyler and Jack Cade five centuries earlier.

Not all rebellions succeeded and this book is also about failures, not all of which were glorious. Along the way there is a good deal of violence, and to read Horpool’s account is to be reminded that rebels often had to pay for their beliefs with their lives – and that their deaths were usually hideous. Here are a few examples from the author’s litany of violence: heads hacked off with rusty swords, multiple strikes during beheading, ears chopped off and evisceration - being hung, drawn and quartered while still alive, the punishment meted out for treason.

As befits a working journalist, Horspool has assembled his facts with considerable dexterity and he also has the capacity to drive his narrative along at a cracking pace. His prose is easy on the eye and his chatty asides are frequently witty and informative.

My one gripe is that his fascination for the medieval and late-medieval periods means that, by the time the book gets to the half-way stage, we have only reached the end of the Wars of the Roses. As a result, an awful lot of history has to be crammed into the remaining 200 pages – and let’s not forget that the author claims to be embracing a thousand years of history within one volume.

That aside, this is a refreshing retelling of English history by an author who is clearly infatuated by the idea that the Whiggish tradition is central to the development of the English character.

The English Rebel: One Thousand Years of Troublemaking from the Normans to the Nineties by David Horspool. Viking, £25.