On a late spring night in 1732, a boisterous group of friends set out from their local pub. They are beginning a journey, a ‘peregrination’ that will take them through the gritty streets of Georgian London and along the River Thames as far as the Isle of Sheppey. And among them is an up-and-coming engraver […]
Peterloo by Jacqueline Riding
On a hot late summer’s day, a crowd of 60,000 gathered in St Peter’s Field. They came from all over Lancashire – ordinary working-class men, women and children – walking to the sound of hymns and folk songs, wearing their best clothes and holding silk banners aloft. Their mood was happy, their purpose wholly serious: […]
Peterloo by Jacqueline Riding
Manchester, August 1819: 60,000 people had gathered in the cause of parliamentary reform. To those defending the status quo, the vote was not a universal right, but a privilege of wealth and land ownership. To radical reformers the fundamental overhaul of a corrupt system was long overdue. The people had come to hear one such […]