MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
The role of peasants in 20th century history
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
Kathe Kollwitz, Charge, sheet 5 of the cycle Peasants War, 1902-1903
[Public Domain] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
The Last Peasant War — Violence and revolution in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe
by Jakub S Benes
Princeton University Press, £35
WHEN I first read the title of this book, I did a double take. I knew of peasant wars in the Middle Ages and of leaders like Wat Tyler and Thomas Muntzer, but peasant wars in the 20th century? Surely the publisher had the date wrong?
Benes soon disabused me of my ignorance. In his introduction he points out that both conservative and Marxist historians have largely ignored the more recent revolutionary roles played by the peasantry.
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