The Levellers

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the group which came to be known as the Levellers and emerged during what would become arguably one of the bloodiest and most turbulent periods of English history. After the First English Civil War, the Levellers started calling for reforms to achieve legal and social equality. They pushed for a new constitution, extended franchise, popular sovereignty, and religious toleration. To do this, the Levellers pioneered the use of pamphlets and petitions, as well as taking to the streets in their thousands to demonstrate wearing their signature sea-green ribbons and sprigs of rosemary. To some they were radical, and to others not radical enough. Though the Leveller movement itself may have been short-lived, the arguments that they made have both inspired and challenged generations since.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Professor Teresa Bejan 3 episodes
  Professor of Political Theory and Fellow of Oriel College, University of Oxford
• Professor Ted Vallance No other episodes
  Professor of History and Dean of Research and Doctoral Study at the University of Roehampton
• Clare Jackson 7 episodes
  Honorary Professor of Early Modern History and Walter Grant Scott Fellow in History at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge

Reading list

• First Among Equals: Visions of Equality before Egalitarianism
  Teresa M. Bejan (Belknap Press, forthcoming in 2026) Google Books →
• The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the English Revolution
  Michael Braddick (Oxford University Press, 2018) Google Books →
• The Levellers; Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution
  Rachel Foxley (Manchester University Press, 2013) Google Books →
• The World Turned Upside Down
  Christopher Hill (Penguin, 1972) Google Books →
• Gender and the English Revolution
  Ann Hughes (Routledge, 2011) Google Books →
• The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640-1650
  John Rees (Verso Books, 2016) Google Books →
• John Lilburne and the Levellers: Reappraising the Roots of English Radicalism 400 years on
  John Rees (ed.) (Routledge, 2017) Google Books →
• The English Levellers
  Andrew Sharp (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1998) Google Books →
• A Radical History of Britain: Visionaries, Rebels and Revolutionaries - the men and women who fought for our freedoms
  Edward Vallance (Abacus, 2010) Google Books →
• Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and The Passions of Posterity
  Blair Worden (Penguin, 2002) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m002wkhq

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002wkhq

Auto-category: 942.06 (History of England and Wales, 1603-1714)