Paine’s rhetorical question brings sharply into focus the difficulty posed by this kind of writing for the literary critic. By normal standards his writing must be rated low, and yet what has been said here should confirm his mastery of techniques appropriate to the occasion.
The principal event held to date to commemorate the 175th Anniversary of the publication of Rights of Man has been the exhibition organised jointly by the Nottingham Co-operative Society, Private Libraries Association and the Thomas Paine Society at the Co-operative Arts Centre, Nottingham.
I happen to know the authors of both these booklets, and I also know the amount of research put into the preparation of their works; I trust that I shall be forgiven, when I say that, as after a healthy meal, I wanted more, after I had finished reading them.
The exhibition chose the fall of the Bastille as its starting point, which made it of particular interest to students of Paine, and went on immediately to show how his Rights of Man challenged Edmund Burke and the Tories in its support of the principles of the French Revolution.
To cry with full freedom, “He’s a Red”, is too easy a way to answer a modern problem. To jail a man, be it in the holiday haunt of Spain or in freezing Moscow will never answer the challenge of Thomas Paine. Freedom. We cannot afford a 1966 Battle of Hastings.
To hear “God save great Thomas Paine” sung on an English stage is surely a rare experience. This was the privilege of the audiences at Sheffield Playhouse recently, during the presentation of “The Stirrings in Sheffield on Saturday Night”, a sort of documentary with music written by Alan Cullen.
