TOM PAINE’S BONES

Englishman Thomas Paine(1737-1809) was the pioneering, freethinking, democratic voice who sparked the American war of Independence, and challenged the power of monarchy and religious fundamentalism. Measured against the population figures of the era, his books outsold nearly every other title ever printed, and vet his name has been almost completely edited out of popular history.

'My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.'

Paine’s fame was such that in September 1819, shortly after the brutal Peterloo massacre in Manchester, bizarre political campaigner WIiiiam Cobbett exhumed his remains and transported them from New York to England, hoping their presence would spark a popular democratic uprising.

Born to a humble working family in Norfolk, Paine had the first of his many astonishingly narrow escapes from death when, as a teenager, he very nearly sailed with the privateer ship The commanded by the absurdly named Captain Death, whose crew were subseQuently slaughtered at sea by the French.