By Martin Green
The Trouble With Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine. Paul Collins. 275pp. Paperback. Bloomsbury, 2006. ISBN 0 7475 7768 4. £12.99.
This is a book that truly lives up to its title, a labyrinthine journey the author takes to trace the bones of Thomas Paine. After his burial in America, they were dug up by William Cobbett who brought them back to England with him, and initially lodged them in a hotel in Liverpool. Thereafter, they changed hands a number of times until they disappeared altogether.
The author starts his search in New York, initially tracking down the house that Thomas Paine died in and visiting various other sites associated with his last days, before his burial at his farm in New Rochelle.
He then journeys to England, visiting any places or sites where the bones may have been taken. He also writes about all those associated with Thomas Paine and all who wrote about him and published his works, particularly his biographer Moncure Conway, after whom Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, London, is named.
One of the difficulties of the book is the immediate detail the author describes in following up his trail. The children playing in the streets he visited, the coffee he drank in cafés, nothing is spared in the minutest detail.
However, what it does demonstrate is how the influence of Thomas Paine lives on, and interest in his work that has never ceased, and nor will ever.