In 1964, there was political opposition to the erection of Paine’s statue outside King’s House in Thetford, UK which was a gift from the American Thomas Paine Foundation. The controversy led to the foundation of the Thomas Paine Society UK with a goal of promoting a better understanding of the man and his work. The Thomas Paine Society UK became the premier Thomas Paine historical society in the UK. In 2025, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association merged with the Thomas Paine Society UK to form the internationally-focused Thomas Paine Historical Association. This is the archive of the Thomas Paine Society UK Bulletin from 1965 to 2013.
Paine’s dismissal from his excise appointment at Afford left him with a shattered career, and without immediate prospects. His regular income had slipped from his grasp, but despite his swift change of fortune and the suddenness of his dismissal, he was probably quite well placed.
Thomas Paine’s bridge of diplomacy, both as a practical bridge and as a symbolic bridge between nations and political eras, centred on his proposal for a single span iron bridge braced by strong abutments cast from nature in the design of a spider’s web.
This is not a book about Thomas Paine, in fact in the course of its three hundred and eighty-six pages he receives only a single passing mention, which leaves aside whether or not its central character, the publisher and doctor John Chapman, read Paine’s works.
BOOK REVIEW: 142 Strand, A Radical Address In Victorian London Read Post »
Thomas Paine called himself a citizen of the world and as if to sustain this claim was an active revolutionary in Britain, France and America. If any one of his contemporaries deserves the title more it is William Duane.
BOOK REVIEW: Transoceanic Radical: William Duane Read Post »
This challenging book is printed in typescript of adequate size for those readers whose eyesight might be declining. Part one analyses the meaning of “democracy”, but the advice in print at the head of its ‘Table of Contents’ that ‘The US, England and France are not democracies’ – gives a due.
BOOK REVIEW: “Democracy? Not yet, perhaps never” Read Post »
When Spence spoke of ‘the real rights’, or ‘the whole rights’ of man, he was signalling that the profoundly radical prescriptions of Thomas Paine had to become more radical still. Republicanism, even accompanied by a fiscal regime of progressive taxation, would not alone suffice to restore humanity.
Paine, Spence, Chartism And ‘The Real Rights Of Man’ Read Post »
Although this is not a book about Thomas Paine, it does bring out the extent of his influence amongst members of the freethought and Secularist movement in England during the 19th century, in particular the use by them of the arguments found in his Age of Reason.
BOOK REVIEW: Crisis Of Doubt, Honest Faith In Nineteenth-Century England Read Post »
One cannot do justice to this fascinating and I would say controversial work. Ms. Vickers in the space available, she rejects the charge that Paine’s work lacks originality and she is scathing about some of the comments made by several scholars critical of Paine.
BOOK REVIEW: “My Pen And My Soul Have Ever Gone Together” Read Post »
The text is supplemented by an range of illustrations, new to me. The book is a mine of useful information and a wonderful example of the sort of research that can be undertaken in a specific area. Mae Silver deserves the congratulations of everyone interested in the life of Paine.
BOOK REVIEW: In His Footsteps, Finding Thomas Paine In Bordentown, N.J. Read Post »
We know well what religious fervour can do armed with machetes, quite apart from the millions of Kalashnikovs sprinkled around by an industry that helps keep Westerners in the style we are accustomed to. And what is going to happen when these toys escalate to guided missiles carrying nuclear weapons?
Abraham Lincoln, the father of the modern Republican Party, was converted to deism by reading The Age of Reason. He wrote a pamphlet extolling Paine’s views which his friends tossed into the stove. Even the bumbling third rate movie actor Ronald Reagan could quote Paine.
BOOK REVIEW: Thomas Paine His Life, His Time and The Birth of Modem Nations Read Post »
That century with its agricultural and industrial revolutions, the Wesley and English Methodism, the sciences, the challenge of slavery, the French and American revolutions, Thomas Paine and other enlightened thinkers, but then the loss of the colonies – was not an easy stage on which a woman might make her case.
BOOK REVIEW: Gender, Religion And Radicalism In The Long Eighteenth Century Read Post »
