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The Estate of Joyce Marlow

The Peterloo Massacre

  • The Peterloo Massacre


  • ***    The subject of the new major film by Mike Leigh***

    Unity of the oppressed can make a difference in politically uncertain times

    A peaceful protest turned tragedy; this is the true story of the working class fight for the vote.

    On August 16 1819, in St Peter’s Field, Manchester, a large non-violent gathering demanding parliamentary reform turned into a massacre, leaving many dead and hundreds more injured.

    This catastrophic event was one of the key moments of the age, a political awakening of the working class, and eventually led to ordinary people gaining suffrage. In this definitive account Joyce Marlow tells the stories of the real people involved and brings to life the atrocity the government attempted to cover up.

    The Peterloo Massacre is soon to be the subject of a major film directed by Mike Leigh.

Joyce Marlow was born and raised in Manchester in the 1930s. Soon after the Second World War she became an actress and later a full-time writer. A life-long Labour supporter and feminist, she edited anthologies such as The Virago Book of Women and the Great War, as well as Suffragettes: The Right to Vote for Women. She was also the winner of the Romantic Novelists’ Best Historical Novel Award. Married with two sons, she lived in the High Peak District in Derbyshire.

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