Ep. 87: Geoffrey Robertson on the Levellers, Democracy, and the English Civil War

“The poorest he that is in England hath a right to live as the greatest he” - Col. Thomas Rainborowe, Leveller. In this episode, I speak with Geoffrey Robertson, an English barrister, historian, and the author of several works on the English Civil War and the Levellers, including The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man who sent Charles I to the Scaffold, and the introduction to Verso books’ The Putney Debates. We’ve published blog articles on the Levellers (here and here), and they have come up in many other conversations, particularly with Gil Schaeffer and around our reader, Equal Human and Political Rights and Democratic Republicanism, but this is the first time I’ve had a guest dedicated to the topic. So much has been written about the Levellers and the English Civil War more generally. Besides Geoffrey’s work, I’d recommend John Rees’ The Leveller Revolution, Anna Keay’s The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown, and a much older collection of Leveller documents called Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution—especially the introduction. The foreword to that book was written by Charles Beard, who folks might remember from our conversation with Clyde Barrow. It’s a fun demonstration of how these ideas and thinkers all connect.