Audiences in Manchester will this week discover insights into the life of Samuel Bamford – reformer, writer, journalist, poet, diarist, and hero of Peterloo.
In ‘The Life and Poetry of Samuel Bamford’, actor Neil Bell, who played Sam Bamford in the Mike Leigh film Peterloo, will read passages from Bamford’s fascinating and acclaimed works.
Bell will be accompanied by songs from Lancashire’s broadside balladress, Jennifer Reid the Langley Linnet.
The event – on Friday 29 April at 7pm – will take place in the Baronial Hall at Chetham’s Library, in Manchester’s oldest buildings.
It will feature passages from Bamfords’s work Early Days and Passages in the Life of a Radical, as well as some of his poetry.
Fergus Wilde, Librarian at Chetham’s Library, said: “Bamford was one of the bravest and more literate of the working men who fought for the rights of the poor. Victimised by Manchester’s corrupt police chief, the thuggish Nadin, he was dragged before the Home Secretary and came perilously close to doom.”
The 2019 Peterloo anniversary led to a mighty upsurge in interest and study of this pivotal event, a time in which Manchester dominated the news and created national political change.
Heavy-handed censorship and treason charges, punishable by death, against those seeking democracy, meant the voices of the reformers were often stilled.
