In response to Martin Kettle’s article on the People’s History Museum’s invitation to supporters to sponsor one of its 100 radical heroes (Right, left and centre: our debt to history’s radicals, 26 December), I wanted to let readers know that people can suggest and sponsor their own radical heroes – we welcome relevant additions to the list. We selected our 100 from the museum’s diverse collections from across the political spectrum – all of them appear somewhere in our museum. They are all radical men and women who believed in ideas worth fighting for and who changed history. The campaign was launched in November by Alan Johnson MP, who sponsored his own radical hero, Scottish activist Jimmy Reid, taking our list immediately to 101.
John Monks
Chair, People’s History Museum
• Gerry Abbott asks (Letters, December 31) whether anyone will celebrate the centenary of the publication of Robert Tressell’s The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists? Mugsborough itself did so. Hastings borough council, to its great credit, published a brilliant illustrated edition of the book in 2014 “as a public enterprise, not for private profit”, for the handsome price of £2.95. I bought mine from its seafront information office.
Jonathan Coe
Hastings, East Sussex
• The centenary of The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists was celebrated with a symposium at the Hastings campus of the University of Brighton in April, 100 years to the day after its publication. We also celebrated the arrival of the Robert Tressell family papers left to the university in Hastings, which we hope to have online by the end of 2015.
Dr Trevor Hopper
Lecturer in social history, University of Brighton in Hastings
