Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Telling insights into ‘the war on the principles of liberty’
ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends a revelatory new history of the Peterloo Massacre
Moments from a massacre: Still from Mike Leigh’s film Peterloo

Peterloo
by Robert Poole
(Oxford University Press, £25)

ACADEMIC analysis of Peterloo has been surprisingly scarce, so Robert Poole’s new book is welcome in shedding new light on the events of August 16, 1819, in this bicentenary year of “The English Uprising.”

Revealing a complex set of influences, Robert Poole rejects the notion that the Peterloo massacre occupies a point on a continuum with repression at one end and reform on the other.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
(L to R) How many Aunties?, Back Hares Mount, Leeds, 1978; M
Photography / 14 April 2025
14 April 2025

Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds

The crowd at Manchester Punk Festival 2024
Culture / 11 April 2025
11 April 2025
Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
MURDER AFORETHOUGHT: The execution of 56 Poles in Bochnia, n
Books / 28 March 2025
28 March 2025
RON JACOBS welcomes the long overdue translation of an epic work that chronicles resistance to fascism during WWII
Literature / 25 March 2025
25 March 2025
JESSICA WIDNER explores how the twin themes of violence and love run through the novels of South Korean Nobel prize-winner Han Kang