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 »
The first three years in America were critical to Thomas Paine’s development as a political thinker. They marked his change from being an unknown individual to a man who could influence world events and they were part of the preparation for his later great work The Rights of Man.
Paine In America 1774-77 Read Post »
Described by T. E. Uttley of the Daily Telegraph as “that evil man Tom Paine”, Thomas Paine was for generations of radicals, secularists and republicans an example and an inspiration. My first port of call was the Great Harry public house in Woolwich.
Paine’s Influence On 19th And 20th Century Radicals, Secularists And Republicans Read Post »
The following saga combines the most comprehensive account yet of the fate of Thomas Paine’s remains, the intriguing story of the recent discovery of a vestige of those, and the recounting of a bizarre, scientific endeavour to validate that piece. It is a tale of fact, probability and possibility.
An Extended History of the Remains of Thomas Paine Read Post »
Robert Aspland wrote a substantial memoir in the Monthly Repository that Joyce “displayed his earnestness chiefly when exposing the misrepresentations of sophists and the calumnies of bigots. He was tolerant of all but baseness and hypocrisy.”
BOOK REVIEW: Jeremiah Joyce, Radical, Dissenter and Writer Read Post »
Could this be the same Harry Harmer who was a South London contact for Republic in the 1980s? Why having written on Martin Luther King, the Labour party and slavery he chooses to write a biography of Paine when there are already enough of them to fill a small library?
BOOK REVIEW: Tom Paine, The Life of a Revolutionary. Harry Harmer Read Post »
![“Reason against unreason” a 1882 illustration by Joseph Keppler and Adolph Schwarzmann shows the “Light of Reason”, containing bust portraits of “Johannes Kepler, I. Kant, Thomas Paine, Jefferson, B. de Spinoza, Franklin, Voltaire, E.H. Haeckel, Tyndall, Huxley, [and] Darwin”, beaming against a large umbrella labeled “Bigotry, Supernaturalism, [and] Fanaticism” – Library of Congress](https://thomaspaine.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Reason-against-unreason.jpg)
Those of a radical persuasion are unlikely to have missed the reference in Richard Dawkins’ new book The God Delusion. Dawkins points to the epithets hurled at ‘poor Tom Paine: Judas, reptile, hog, mad dog, souse, louse, archbeast, brute, liar and of course infidel’.
The New Age Of Reason Read Post »
Hitches may be a polemical writer but, judging by this performance, is certainly not an effective public speaker, except that his inordinately long and ponderous replies to questions, a technique perfected by many politicians, makes it difficult to challenge his highly controversial views.
‘The Rights Of Man’ Needs ‘An Age Of Reason’ Read Post »
How much Paine ever learned about his daughter and his estranged wife we will probably never know. Sarah would appear to have conceived about six months after the marriage, and Paine was back in Thetford to commence studying for the Excise about the time his daughter died.
Thomas Paine: Observations On Methodism And His Marriage To Mary Lambert Read Post »
The story of Paine’s “conversion” surfaced within days of his death. In fact there has rarely been a critic of Christianity who has not renounced his critical opinions according to writers such as Mr. Samuel, author of works who also trots out the tale of Voltaire having renounced his opinions.
`Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness’ Read Post »
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.
BOOK REVIEW: The Trouble With Tom Read Post »
In a sense this book, the screenplay written by Trevor Griffith’s for the proposed film in his life of Paine, well almost, as it does not take boyhood, saddens me, since its publication infers, to me at least, that the film may never be made.
BOOK REVIEW: These Are The Times, A Life Of Thomas Paine Read Post »
