Magna Carta 800th anniversary: three contrasting videos

Anthony is the honorary president of openDemocracy. He was its founding editor-in-chief (2001-7), the co-director of The Convention on Modern Liberty (2009) and the first director of Charter 88 (1988-95). His most recent books are ‘The Lure of Greatness: England's Brexit and America's Trump’ (2017) and ‘Taking Control!: Humanity and America after Trump and the Pandemic’ (2022). He is a trustee of openTrust. His collected articles can be found on Authory and he posts on X at @AnthonyBarnett

Peter Linebaugh, a historian currently residing in the region of the American Great Lakes, grew up amid the hopes and rubble of post-war London, was schooled by (among others) Anglicans in Karachi, Quakers in Swarthmore, and Cold Warriors in New York.  Later he worked with E.P. Thompson at the Centre for the Study of Social History at the University of Warwick.  Thompson's widow, Dorothy, the pre-eminent historian of Chartism, welcomed Peter's Magna Carta Manifesto when it was published by the University of California Press in 2008. That book contains William Morris' priceless account of 14th century peasant accounts of the death of King John, accounts which he is proud to perpetuate as history from below at its best.

Peter's book, Magna Carta Manifesto.