Bodleian set to hit the big screen

Gordon Manning, left, takes a break from the English Civil War to make a call on his mobile. Also pictured during filming at the Bodleian Library are actors Ray Claridge, centre, and Alan Fisher

Scenes for a major new film, Cromwell and Fairfax, have been filmed in Oxford -- the city that Charles I chose as his capital, and where he stayed for much of the English Civil War.

The film makers could hardly have made a better choice, given that all the film's great characters would have been familiar with the settings around the Bodleian Library and Exeter College.

Royalists and Puritans cheerfully chatted to tourists and Oxford University students emerging from examinations, with Radcliffe Square transformed into a film village, filled with caravans, cables and cameras.

Convocation Hall, which in Stuart times briefly housed Parliament, once again became the nation's assembly. It has been used in one of the film's most dramatic scenes, where Cromwell enters with troops to eject MPs and close down Parliament.

The signing of the death warrant of King Charles, played by Rupert Everett, has also been filmed at the Bodleian, to mark an unusual high-point for the library in the Queen's Golden Jubilee Year.

Cromwell physically grabbed the hand of one waverer to force him to place his signature on the warrant.

Actor Tim Roth, whose previous films include Reservoir Dogs and Planet of the Apes, plays Cromwell, who became Chancellor of Oxford University in 1650 -- the year after Charles I's execution.

Sir Thomas Fairfax, the great Parliamentary General who with Cromwell successfully besieged Oxford at the end of the war, has gone down in history as the saviour of the great Oxford library.

After entering the city he ordered an armed guard to be placed outside the Bodleian to protect it from looters.

The Scottish actor, Dougray Scott, who starred in Enigma with Kate Winslet, plays the Yorkshireman Fairfax.