Housmans Bookshop and Comma Press are delighted to host two online events with renowned British actors Christopher Eccleston and Maxine Peake reading from protest-inspired stories published in Comma’s History-into-Fiction series, Protest and Resist.

The two events will take place on two consecutive dates, with Christopher reading on the 9th of February and Maxine on the 10th. Both readings will be followed by a conversation between authors and historians discussing the events depicted in the stories read by Christopher and Maxine.

Maxine will be reading the story ‘Night Cleaners’ Strike’ by Maggie Gee from the Protest anthology.

Please read:

If you purchase a “book plus entry ticket”, please email shop@housmans.com stating which book you prefer (Protest or Resist) and let us know whether you would like the book posted or if you would like to collect it from the shop. Please supply a UK address if the book is to be posted out. 

An invitation to this online event will be emailed to you on the day of the event. We will use the email address used to purchase the ticket. Please check your spam folder and if you have not received the invitation by 5pm, email us and we will resend it. 

More info on Comma’s History-into-Fiction series, Protest and Resist:

At a time of great political disarray – government corruption and incompetence, the COVID pandemic, Brexit and new austerity measures looming – we look back to the past to remember the times the people have called it out, stood up, resisted!

For a nation that brought the world Chartism, the Suffragettes, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and so many other grassroots social movements, Britain rarely celebrates its long, great tradition of people power. Both Protest and Resist are collections of fictions and essays that explore and commemorate key moments of British protest and defiance over the last two millenia.

Written in close consultation with historians, sociologists and eyewitnesses – who also contribute afterwords – these stories follow fictional characters caught up in real-life struggles, offering a street level perspective on the noble art of resistance. Authors re-imagine campaigns to change unjust laws, protests against unlawful acts, uprisings successful and unsuccessful – from Boudica to Blair Peach, from the Battle of Cable Street to the tragedy of Grenfell Tower, from the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 to the anti-Iraq War demo of 2003.

Speakers

Sally Alexander is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at Goldsmiths University of London. Her books include Becoming a Woman: and other essays in 19th and 20th century feminist history (1994), and most recently History and Psyche: Culture, Psychoanalysis, and the Past, edited with Barbara Taylor (2012). She was an organiser of the first national UK Women’s Liberation Movement conference held at Ruskin College, Oxford in 1970, was a member of several groups in the London Women’s Liberation Workshop, and among other protests participated in the 1970 Miss World Demonstration.

Maggie Gee has published 15 books, including The Ice People, My Cleaner, The White Family, shortlisted for the International Impac and Orange (now Women’s) Prize, The Blue (stories), Virginia Woolf in Manhattan and most recently Blood (2019) which was on the Sunday Times’s ‘Best Literary Novels 2019’ list as well as their ‘Best Summer Reading 2019’ list,  a black comedy-thriller about angry pre-Brexit Britain. Hilary Mantel described Blood as ‘An astonishing book. Funny and fierce, written with style and dash, without fear.’ Maggie has been translated into 15 languages. She has been warning against climate change in her fiction since Where Are the Snows (1991). She is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. The Red Children is forthcoming from Saqi in January 2022.