Radical Duke: Danielle Allen with Sean Wilentz

Political philosopher Danielle Allen revisits the American Revolution through a forgotten English duke and a hidden story of radical ideas that shaped two worlds. 

 Harvard professor Danielle Allen had an unexpected encounter in Sussex, England: she came across a rare parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence hidden among the historical records at the West Sussex Record Office in Chichester. The document led her to uncover a long-hidden story that changes how British and American history is understood. In her new book, Radical Duke, Allen traces the life of Charles Lennox, the 3rd Duke of Richmond—an aristocrat who supported press freedom, religious tolerance, and resistance to the Crown. He also formed a secret alliance with future American Founding Father Thomas Paine. Through archival sleuthing, Allen argues that the Age of Revolution began earlier than we thought—not with the Boston patriots, but in Britain, where figures like the Duke of Richmond and his radical circle helped shape ideas about rights and popular rule before they spread to America. Allen speaks with American historian Sean Wilentz about the Duke of Richmond and the radical movement he helped fuel—and how close it came to transforming Britain.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and author of Justice by Means of Democracy, Cuz, and Our Declaration, winner of the Parkman Prize. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Academy of Sciences and Letters, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sean Wilentz is a professor of history at Princeton University. His primary research interests include U.S. social and political history. He is the author of The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008 and Chants Democratic, which won several national prizes, including the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association, among others. Wilentz is also the coauthor and coeditor of The Key of Liberty (1993) and the editor of several other books, including Major Problems in the Early Republic (1992) and The Rose and the Briar (2004). One of his major works, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005), was awarded the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Wilentz also serves as a contributing editor to The New Republic and is a member of the editorial boards of Dissent and Democracy. His writings on music have earned him a Grammy nomination and a Deems Taylor-ASCAP award.