Richard Boston
Natural Born Protestor
The Life and Adventures of William Cobbett
By Richard Ingrams
HarperCollins 456pp £20
There’s a Marx Brothers film in which Groucho sings a song with the refrain, ‘Whatever it is, I’m against it.’ William Cobbett was like that. He was a one-man protest movement, but not a single-issue one. The things he was against included economists, enclosures, military officers (for their sadism and peculation), the Establishment (which he called ‘the Thing’), London (which he called ‘the great wen’), doctors, schools, Quakers, Jews, book reviewers (‘the old shuffling bribed sots’), tea (‘a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth and a maker of misery for old age’), Shakespeare, Dr Johnson, and potatoes (‘soul-degrading’).
He was also against Thomas McKean, one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. In a hilariously defamatory attack, Cobbett wrote of him:
His private character is infamous. He beats his wife and she beats him. … He is a notorious drunkard. … He has been horsewhipped in the City
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Interview with Iris Murdoch by John Haffenden via @Lit_Review
I love Helen Garner and this, by @chris_power in @Lit_Review, is excellent.
Yesterday was Fredric Jameson's 90th birthday.
This month's Archive newsletter includes Terry Eagleton on The Political Unconscious, and other pieces from our April 1983 issue.
Terry Eagleton - Supermarket of the Mind
Terry Eagleton: Supermarket of the Mind - The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act by Fredric Jameson
literaryreview.co.uk