Edward Pearce

Edward Pearce is the author of Denis Healey and Reform! The Fight for the 1832 Reform Act.

Spurning at the High: a poet of Chartism

Edward Pearce, 6 November 2003

Will became an ardent public man, working well in those times when reforms were begun with a young hopefulness of immediate good which has been much checked in our days, and getting at last returned to Parliament by a constituency who paid his expenses.

Middlemarch

The ‘hopefulness’ being ‘much checked in our days’ speaks the caution of 1867 as against the enthusiasm...

Sweetly Terminal

Edward Pearce, 5 August 1993

‘What’s all this?’

Hooting

Edward Pearce, 22 October 1992

Like many another high-toned writer, I started journalistic life on the Express, initially the Sunday in John Junor’s long days, then the Daily under Roy Wright. Beaverbrook had been dead by then for ten years. The amiable son, who touchingly refused the title in a spirit of unaffected and perhaps warranted humility, reigned rather than ruled in his place and was known officially as Sir Max Aitken, unofficially, after his gallant war, as Biggles. He was widely liked, even loved; but though a civilised and kindly boss, he lacked the zest and edge of an ordinarily successful newspaper-owner, never mind the special, bottomless fund of vitality with which his father boiled. Best remembered for his description of the sport of sailing as ‘standing under the shower tearing up ten-pound notes’, he was nevertheless a superior article in every imaginable way to the brutish units of accountancy constituting the present.

Class Traitor

Edward Pearce, 11 June 1992

‘“Bull,” I thought as I put the letter down on my desk. “You’re scared witless, Brenda.” ’ The style and address of Eric Hammond is unmistakable. He is here declining to be scared by a letter from Brenda Dean, ‘the pleasant woman at the helm of SOGAT’, trying to frighten him over EEPTU relations with Eddie Shah and Today.

Rabbit Resartus

Edward Pearce, 8 November 1990

The thought did occur during the Eighties that it wouldn’t do to leave Rabbit Angstrom – Toyota dealer, wife-swapper, gone-to-seed athlete, conservative, citizen of Brewer, Pennsylvania, ex-working man, Scandinavian American and emblematic mess – just where he was after a mere three books. Indeed, although Rabbit, at the end of what is now a tetralogy, looks sick to the terminal rim, I would hesitate to take bets that resurrection is ruled out.’

No one disputes that the British electoral system before 1832 was a mockery of representation. Members of Parliament did not want or pretend to be representative: the word ‘democracy’...

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The sudden death of Roy Jenkins took us all by surprise. He was over eighty, of course, and with a heart problem that had required major surgery. This latterly gave him a good excuse to sit down...

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Up the avenue

Peter Clarke, 11 June 1992

Don’t be put off by the title, since it’s only a laboured allusion to Cobbett’s Rural Rides, lacking the alliterative euphony of the original. What Edward Pearce of the Guardian...

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What difference did she make?

Eric Hobsbawm, 23 May 1991

The ‘question of leadership’ which is the subject of both these books is the question of how much difference leadership in politics can make. Contrary to what is held by believers in...

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