Peterloo: Thousands view Maxine Peake's Facebook Live broadcast

16 Aug 2019

The actor, who starred in the film Peterloo, read Percy Bysshe Shelley's, The Masque of Anarchy, in The Historic Reading Room.

Shelley's 1819 political poem was written in the aftermath of the Peterloo massacre as a rallying cry for freedom and unity.

His 'torrent of indignation', as he described it, was deemed unsafe to publish at the time by his friend Leigh Hunt, given the gagging acts the government had introduced after the massacre. It was not published until 1832, a decade after Shelley's death and the same year as the Reform Act was passed, which extended voting rights to men who were small landholders, tenant farmers and shopkeepers.

Maxine's passionate reading on Wednesday, 12 August was broadcast on Facebook Live and has been viewed more than 21,000 times. Comments by those who watched it included: "goosebumps", "superb!", "fantastically read and still relevant today!" and "Brilliant read by one of our finest actors in the beautiful John Rylands Library. Absolutely perfect."

You can watch the reading here.

In other Peterloo news, the curator of The John Rylands Library's exhibition on Peterloo, Janette Martin, has written a wonderful account exploring the causes and effects of Peterloo for Who do you think you are? magazine. You can read the article here.

You can visit the free Peterloo exhibition until Sunday, 29 September.

A programme of events marking the 200th anniversary of Peterloo is being held from Friday, 16 August to Sunday, 18 August. Find out more on the Peterloo 1819 website.