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Showing posts from November, 2019

A novel about Gerrard Winstanley (1609- 1676)

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                           David Caute - 'Comrade Jacob'                                                                             Digger tract by William Everard from 1649  -courtesy Wikipedia- in public domain                          Author and playwright David Caute ( born 1936) , attended seminars given by historian Christopher Hill at Oxford University in the late 1950's. Christopher Hill (1912-2003) , one time master of Balliol College, a Communist who broke with the more orthodox party line following the 1956 Soviet  invasion of Hungary, depicted the British Civil Wars as 'The English Revolution' -the title of his first book published in 1940. Hill became a specialist in the study of the Puritanism, and also the radical sects associated with the Commonwealth. And so the young David Caute was introduced to the Diggers, in particular their most famous thinker, Gerrard Winstanley, originally from Wigan. A group of land squatters, most known for e