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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Thomas Paine
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(1737–1809)
Radical author and politician, most of whose dangerous ideas are now commonplace. He emigrated to America in 1774, where he published a pamphlet (Common Sense 1776) advocating immediate independence from Britain; it sold in large numbers. In 1787 Paine returned to England, where he wrote The Rights of Man (1791–2). This began as an answer to Burke's hostile Reflections on the Revolution in France (it used the telling line that Burke 'pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird'); the book went on to advocate a social contract guaranteeing freedom for the individual, full democracy, a graded income tax, old age pensions, family allowances, free education and a reduction in levels of armament.
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The result was a charge of treason and Paine's hasty escape to France, where he was elected to the revolutionary convention. But his opposition to the execution of the French king (he argued for exile) soon placed his own life in danger. In prison he completed The Age of Reason (1794–5), an attack on conventional Christianity, mocking 'debaucheries' in the Old Testament and inconsistencies in the New. In 1802 Paine returned to America, where he died. In 1819 another English radical, William *Cobbett, made the pious gesture of exhuming his body and bringing the bones back to England.
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