Judy Woodruff and Jamelle Bouie on Freedom of the Press
Non-Members $20 | Members $15
Pursuits of Knowledge
Danielle Allen on “Radical Duke”
- Complimentary parking
The author will discuss her book “Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat―and the American Revolution―Transformed Britain”
- Non-Members $15
- Members $10
About The Event
Danielle Allen will discuss her book “Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat―and the American Revolution―Transformed Britain”
Event Details
- Location: Monticello's Howard and Abby Milstein Theater at Monticello's visitor center
- Seating opens at 5:30pm and the program begins promptly at 6pm.
- Meet the author and book signing available after the program.
- Complimentary parking is available at the David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center
- The Monticello Shop will be open before and after the program - merchandise, snacks, and beverages will be available for purchase.
Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat―and the American Revolution―Transformed Britain by Danielle Allen
About the Book
An explosive, deeply revisionist work that reveals how a renegade English Duke and Thomas Paine, the firebrand polemicist, almost brought the American Revolution to Britain.
When Danielle Allen unearthed a parchment of the Declaration of Independence buried away in Sussex, England, little did she know that she had discovered a story of historical magnitude that would alter our understanding of British and American history. Revealing that the Age of Revolution began earlier than we thought―not with the Boston patriots nor with the Parisian Jacobins, but in Britain itself―Allen demonstrates in Radical Duke that the rights of man, the theory of revolution, and calls for popular sovereignty all emerged from the radical energies of London before they spread across the Atlantic and the Channel.
At the center of this new age was Charles Lennox, the progressive Third Duke of Richmond, a rarely cited historical figure who becomes the biographical focus of Allen’s groundbreaking work. Even with royal blood coursing through his veins, the handsome, gallivanting Duke (1735–1806) preferred to rub shoulders with ordinary folk―supporting the rights of jurors, freedom of the press, and religious toleration. As Allen shows, from 1767 to 1782, he was England’s leading voice of opposition to the Crown, and, as the leader of the Sussex militia, even a threat to the King’s power. But the Duke did not challenge the Crown alone.
The archives have long hidden the covert alliance between the young Duke and his age-mate Thomas Paine, the future author of Common Sense. While working as an obscure tax collector, Paine was engaged by the Duke to contribute to the most influential but anonymous newspaper essays of the age, The Letters of Junius, which spawned sedition trials, defined the rights of man, and brought England to the brink of revolution. Along with a small cadre of radicals, Paine and the Duke fired hearts across two continents and secretly stoked a burgeoning political movement.
Throughout Radical Duke, Allen sets the record straight. Through archival evidence, confirmed with computational tools, she reveals the anonymous authors of the inflammatory Junius letters; she also identifies a new Paine work, his first book, The Juryman’s Touchstone, cowritten in 1771. In the end, the Duke swerved. He did not advocate the overthrow of the monarchy but remained loyal to both Crown and people, launching an age of reform. With her penetrating prose, Allen resuscitates a seminal political figure who has been egregiously neglected throughout history.
About the Author
Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Democratic Knowledge Project-Learn, a research lab focused on civic education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy as well as a seasoned nonprofit leader, democracy advocate, tech ethicist, distinguished author, and mom. She is a contributing columnist at The Atlantic Magazine and was the 2020 winner of the Library of Congress' Kluge Prize, which recognizes scholarly achievement in the disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prize. She received the Prize "for her internationally recognized scholarship in political theory and her commitment to improving democratic practice and civics education." Her many books also include the widely acclaimed Our Declaration: a reading of the Declaration of Independence in defense of equality; Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.; Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus; and Justice by Means of Democracy. Her forthcoming book, The Radical Duke, a biography of an 18th century British political reformer, is due out with Liveright/Norton in 2026.
About the Moderator
Dr. Jane Kamensky is President and CEO of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. A leading historian of early America and the United States, she worked for three decades as a professor and higher education leader, most recently as Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. She brings to her work at Monticello a strong sense of civic purpose and a commitment to the ways that rigorous scholarship and compelling, honest storytelling help to build citizen capacity and revitalize the American experiment.
Kamensky is the author or editor of numerous books spanning four centuries of American history, including A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley (2016), which won four major prizes and was a finalist for several others. Her most recent book, Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution (2024), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others.
A former Commissioner of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and past Trustee of the Museum of the American Revolution, Kamensky is as a member of the National Advisory Council of More Perfect and of the Executive Committee of the national history-civics initiative Educating for American Democracy, among many other public history roles. From 2018 through 2025, she served as a scholarly advisor and on-camera expert for the Florentine Films/ Ken Burns documentary, The American Revolution.
Kamensky holds a BA and a PhD in American history from Yale University.
Monticello gratefully acknowledges the partnership of More Perfect in our 250th anniversary initiatives.
