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John Keane
Tom Paine
Hay Festival 1995,
Keane introduces his life of the great c18th radical, scourge of the monarchy, the church, and the houses of parliament, who wrote the defining articles of faith for both the American and French Revolutions - "Common Sense" and "The Age of Reason." Paine's extraordinary treaty Rights of Man identifies and argues many of the causes closest to contemporary political life, and marks him as Britain's most orginal and influential political thinker.