Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat―and the American Revolution―Transformed Britain

by Danielle S. Allen

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 discovered a parchment of the Declaration of Independence buried away in Sussex, England, little did she know that she had stumbled onto a larger story that fundamentally changes our understanding of eighteenth-century British and American history. Demonstrating in The Radical Duke that the Age of Revolution began neither with Boston patriots nor with Parisian Jacobins, Allen shows how Charles Lennox, the progressive Third Duke of Richmond, along with radical pamphleteer Thomas Paine secretly fomented a political revolution in which they supported their rebelling American brethren, led the first proposals for universal manhood suffrage, and argued for freedom of the press and religious toleration. Identifying for the first time the anonymous authors of Britain’s seditious Junius letters and revealing that Paine cowrote The Juryman’s Touchstone of 1771, The Radical Duke sets the historical record straight, conjoining radical thought in America and Britain and revealing the complex foundation of modern constitutional monarchy and our own age.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, American Revolution, American History, Politics

464 pages, Hardcover

First published June 16, 2026

About the author

Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, and Director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, is a political theorist who has published broadly in democratic theory, political sociology, and the history of political thought. Widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in both ancient Athens and modern America, Allen is the author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000), Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown vs. the Board of Education (2004), Why Plato Wrote (2010), Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (2014), Education and Equality (2016), and Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A. (2017). She is the co-editor of the award-winning Education, Justice, and Democracy (2013, with Rob Reich) and From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in the Digital Age (2015, with Jennifer Light). She is a former Chair of the Mellon Foundation Board, past Chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Dr. Allen received her undergraduate education in Classics at Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude. She was awarded an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Classics from Cambridge University and went on to Harvard University, where she received her M.A. and Ph.D. in political science. She joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1997 as Assistant Professor of Classics. In 2000, Dr. Allen became Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures, Political Science and the Committee on Social Thought. In 2003, she was promoted to Professor. The following year she was named Dean of the Division of Humanities, a role she was in until 2007.

Widely known for her work on justice and citizenship in ancient Athens and its application to modern America, Dr. Allen was awarded in 2002 a MacArthur Fellowship for her ability to combine "the classicist's careful attention to texts and language with the political theorist's sophisticated and informed engagement."

Reviews

[Jessica]

Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with a free digital copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

It turns out that the Americans weren’t the only ones fed up with King George III. Long before the Declaration of Independence, the British monarch (whose severe bouts of manic-depression would one day land him under house arrest, usurped by his son in all but name) and the archaic aristocratic system he presided over were ruffling feathers much closer to home. The most noteworthy opponent of traditional monarchical rule was Charles Lennox, the third duke of Richmond and the centerpiece of Danielle Allen’s revisionist history, Radical Duke. Although he would never go so far as to support the abolition of the monarchy, Richmond, who was a friend and contemporary of Thomas Paine, spent most of his career pushing for greater rights and representation for the British people, and restrictions on monarchical power. A supporter of both American and Irish independence, Richmond’s work pre-dates the American Revolution, leading Allen to conclude that he was one of the architects of the Age of Revolution.

American historians have long acknowledged the influence that the English Civil War of the 17th century had on the American Revolution, and as the tragic end to George III’s reign would show, the king was eventually deemed unfit to rule by his own people. Few Americans have ever heard of Charles Lennox (myself among them), and Radical Duke shows how the effects of the Enlightenment led people on both sides of the pond to similar conclusions about liberty and the rights of men. Unfortunately, Radical Duke is still a dry, tedious tome. Even as an audiobook, I struggled to get through it. As is so often the case with history books, there’s plenty here to mine for research, but as a leisurely read, it misses the mark.

[Socraticgadfly]

This book wasn't quite bs-pablum, though the reality of Lennox vs the last portion of the subtitle might count as mendacious. It was craptacular in some ways for sure and maybe at some point I will make that a new shelf.

Let's dig in.

Error in the Prologue: George III actually George I’s great-grandson, not grandson.

Error in early chapter: Bonnie Prince Charlie called the Young Pretender, not the Pretender, as of course his father was the Old Pretender.

Beyond the dust jacket? The Duke did more than swerve, he became a Tory.

Paine as “Junius”? Wiki’s page on Junius’ identity lists about 40 possibilities, including a group. Only after that, are he, and Franklin listed in a short second set, said to be nothing more than people of whom others have had a vague guess. That said, Allen’s not the first to write a book to that end. The first was 150 years ago, the second just over 100, and funded by the … Thomas Paine National Historical Association. This is part of what's either craptacular or bs-pablum or whatever, in my opinion — Allen making conjectural stretches that just aren't warranted.

The idea that Paine was Richmond’s patron? Then why did he get in so much financial trouble? Was he beyond Richmond's pale?

The idea that things like the Gordon Riots are “ignored” by popular history? I’ve read about them in multiple in-depth, but not wholly academic, histories. But, they’re of almost zero relevance to the American Revolution, except perhaps as an indirect tie to US feeling about the Quebec Act of 1774. The 1778 Papists Act, aka Catholic Relief Act, had moderately reduced some restrictions on Catholics and the riots were against that. Many “everyday” English rioters may have been economically burdened by fallout from the Revolution, but if so, they might not have realized that was the cause.

By this time, I wasn’t even grokking I was skimming.

Per a New Yorker review by Adam Gopnik, the idea that Richmond was a primary cause of the Revolution is laughable. The Adamses in Massachusetts, along with Dickenson and other Pennsylvanians not named Franklin, had no direct and little indirect connection with him. Beyond Arthur, he likely had little influence on other Lees. And, Gopnik aside, it is unduly touted by two many reviewers, so on that shelf it goes!

As for transforming Britain? Tosh. Universal manhood suffrage didn’t happen until 1918. That was after almost all of Europe west of Russia.

Pocket and rotten boroughs were addressed somewhat earlier, relatively — with the 1832 Reform Bill, long after the duke, George III and George IV were all dead.

I tried skimming, lighter than grokking, but when I got to Allen’s claim that foolscap was a special type of paper, when no, it was the normal size for everyday writing then, I said no.

I also said I can’t give her a gentleman’s 2 stars.

EDIT: To add a bit of snark, Ms. Allen is on the Council of Foreign Relations? No wonder the US is pounding sand down a rathole in Ukraine and getting Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ at a place like CFR to sign off on that.

[Catie]

The Radical Duke was an interesting concept that ultimately didn't work for me. Going in, I expected a biography of Charles Lennox, the 3rd Duke of Richmond, especially as someone who has loved reading about the Lennox sisters. Instead, this felt much more like a broad social and political history of the latter half of the eighteenth century, with the duke serving primarily as a lens through which those events were examined.

While there were moments I found informative, the audiobook's nearly 16-hour runtime felt far longer than it needed to be. Much of the material could have been presented more succinctly, and I often found myself wishing the narrative would return to the duke himself rather than another extended discussion of the broader historical and socio-political context.

The narration was also a significant hurdle for me. Danielle Allen is clearly knowledgeable about her subject, but her performance felt more like listening to a college lecture than an audiobook designed to engage listeners. I ended up significantly increasing the playback speed just to maintain my focus.

This wasn't a bad book, and readers looking for an in-depth exploration of eighteenth-century British politics and society may appreciate it more than I did. Unfortunately, as someone hoping for a compelling biography of the 3rd Duke of Richmond, I came away disappointed.

Thank you to Danielle Allen, RBMedia, and NetGalley for an advanced listener copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

[Bargain Sleuth Book Reviews]

Thanks to NetGalley and RBMedia for the digital copy of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.

If you’ve followed Bargain Sleuth Reviews for any length of time, then you know that I love reading uncovered histories; people and events that had been lost to time being rediscovered. Radical Duke is just such a book, shining light on the Duke of Richmond, who was in Britain looking for reform the way the colonies in America demanded.

The Duke, Charles Lennox, played a major role in the British political form movement in the late 1700s. His life was so interesting because he was an aristocrat who wanted to reform Parliament. He believed in universal male suffrage in order to fill the House of Commons with a more representative body based on the actual population. He believed in a constitutional monarchy, too. Wild to think about, really, in a time when that was so NOT how things were done in Britain.

The Duke of Richmond should also be remembered as a supporter of Thomas Paine. He sponsored the man as he developed his writing skills and thoughts for public consumption. The duke also had complicated relations with the movers and shakers, but he also had some really great collaborators, too.

I have to admire the author, who dug deep for information about Charles Lennox; the man made an effort to destroy any of his documents that didn’t jive with what he said publicly. Which is an historian’s nightmare. His library survived, though, and Danielle Allen discovered that he was an avid note-taker in the margins of his books.

The author narrates her own book, and I thought she did a good job; not all authors are cut out for narration. You can really tell the passion she had behind the project. The book isn’t perfect; there were times where the reader is out in the weeds, so to speak, but overall, a very interesting book

[Cassie]

Thank you to NetGalley for access to the audiobook!

To anyone who has heard the story of the American Revolution, the words “no taxation without representation” are synonymous with the spark of what was to come. This and other notorious early addresses that shaped the country's ethos were not unique to North American shores. What I had never even heard suggested is that these notions, and some of the same actions of protest, had already happened in the very country the colonies would split from. The champion of sovereignty and representation was none other than a man quite close to the throne by title. Using previously accessed material this book gives a comprehensive overview of a man and his mission.

For years the Duke of Richmond had sought to reform the political system in England. Though he'd stay true to the monarchy as an institution, he was disparaged by the lack of equivocal voice of power for all people. The system of heredity and wealth shaping the future of the masses, where merit itself was not always rewarded, had hit him personally by his measure as well as philosophically.

“Radical Duke” uses the lens of the Duke's life to chart the social and political changes from the mid 18th to very early 19th century. The destruction of his personal papers as per his will has left many gaps in his life. For this project, the author attempts to remedy that by being the first to receive permission to extensively explore the Duke's personal library. All of this was spurred on after a curious connection to someone deeply associated with the American Revolution via cabby. Thomas Paine's acquaintance with the Duke was not unknown. The depth, extent, and place in their timelines was. That discovery alone paints the cries from the colonies with a whole new light.

For years I have been on the lookout for texts that approached the rebellion of the colonies from the other side of the pond. Before picking up this title, the Duke of Richmond and various significant events in his lifetime were at best vague concepts. Previous books had revealed the influence French writing and philosophy on our founders. I'd never heard or read a peep of how shifting ideas of governance across the Atlantic inspired our own fracturing.

Adjacent to the Duke's life was the battles fought in paper. I was fascinated by the groundwork being set by the Duke and his compatriots for what we'd see here as the freedom of speech and the press. The system they used of pseudonyms and collective anonymous public writing and exchange is more infamous here in the form of the paper debates leading to the formation of our Constitution. The earlier adoption in Britain was vital as the threat of sedition charges on individuals as well as printers could not be underestimated.

By no means could this have been an easy work to condense. Yet for all the events, ideas, trials, parliament sessions, schmoozing, social scandals, and personal struggles Allen does a great job of tying things together. The pace and style makes the timeline and slew of titles of individuals easier to digest for someone knew to this history. Important concepts are repeated enough to connect the reader and seal the chapter's place in the big picture but never to exhaustion.

I might consider taking this book slower and reading it in print form. The author's narration is by no means bad, just that it's serviceable. It is very difficult in spoken form to make dense, lengthy, factual text engaging as well as interesting. It doesn't have the opportunity frequently to draw on emotions to frame delivery. Occasionally I found my ears starting to tune out when listening for long chunks of time and had to repeat sections. This could have been just as much my fault for not savoring this book as it was likely intended.

Overall this was a fascinating and insightful read. It provided a fresh prospective on what is a well worn version of events. Or, in many cases, touched on matters that have been silenced by a patriotic narrative. Accessible, informative, and a portrait of a remarkable mind. This is a great piece of research, observation, and analysis.

[Don]

As an American with a deep interest in the history of our nation and of our government's founding, I am startled to realize how shallow a view I have had of the British context, political and historical, from which the American colonies were parting. Harvard Professor Danielle Allen's new book, Radical Duke, has given me a major leap forward with her focus on Britain's own political reform movement as seen through the biography of Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond - who played a central role in shaping and sustaining those efforts. "Richmond's" biography intersects with the lives of all of the major players in political England - the King, Parliamentary leaders, Opposition members. Watching their diverse positioning and arguments play out as they responded to issues in the Colonies was fascinating.

At the heart of the book is Richmond:
- an aristocratic seeker of a balance of mutually restraining powers between the monarchy, the hereditary aristocracy, and the common citizenry;
- an aristocrat pursuing Parliamentary reform to incorporate universal male sufferage in determining representation in the House of Commons of the whole population;
- a man who devoted much of his adult life to bringing about governmental reforms which were, for the most part, brought to fruition only after his death;
- a flawed but persistent and influential champion of the rights of all Britons, the importance of the constitutional monarchy, conceptualizer of Commonwealth structure (monarch to all; legislatures to separate geographical bases)
- a patron of Thomas Paine, who honed his thinking and writing skills under Richmond's sponsorship and direction before playing his own influential role in America
- a man who maintained consequential lifelong relations, sometimes tempestuous, sometimes collaborative, with a host of other major figures who shaped Britain's journey through the Age of Revolution - King George III, Edmund Burke, William Pitt the Younger, Thomas Paine.

Richmond is here 'rediscovered' and 'restored' by Allen after Richmond's deliberate end-of-life effort to destroy his trail of historical documents other than those published and in public. (A destruction culturally reflecting Richmond's membership in the British aristocracy, suggests Allen).

Allen and her detective work feature throughout as she grounds her insights and conclusions in her 'reading' of Richmond's library - his voluminous marginal notes, his clusters of books owned, seemingly out-of-place ownership of certain works - as well as her analyses of various letters, determination of authorship of anonymously published pamphlets. Allen identifies Richmond as the guiding light and sponsoring patron of the network of anonymous souls producing 'The Junius Letters.'
Radical Duke is a fertile book that sent me scurrying regularly into AI pursuits of elaborating sources on so many topics - the kind of perspective-broadening read that I find a deep pleasure to encounter.

(I am appreciative to have received a prepublication copy of Radical Duke through a GoodReads Giveaway.)

[R G]

Radical Duke tells a story that has never been told. It could not be told, because much of the evidence had been buried for 250 years. In other cases, modern technology was used to evaluate probable authorship of anonymous works.

The revelations about the past are only part of the reason I loved this book. I learned so much about American and British history, and the story of the Duke's life was fascinating standing on its own. In American history, the story of Thomas Paine always sounded odd. He is an obscure, mediocre British laborer. He lands in the American colonies, and suddenly writes the essay that sets the colonies on fire. A bit lucky for a first work. Danielle Allen shows us that he was a student of government and a great revolutionary writer before he set foot in the American colonies. He honed his skills under the guidance of the Duke of Richmond.

More importantly, this book is a great study of what was happening in English politics as the American revolution developed and succeeded. And it tells the story of the efforts to reform British politics and government, and the winding path to reform. It involved complex, shifting alliances and all kinds of compromises. By the end, you will have a much better understanding of why England and France reformed in such different ways. The actions of the Duke of Richmond were a key part of that story. It's wonderful to pick up a history book where you learn so much.

[Joe]

Years before the Sons of Liberty chucked the tea into the waters of Boston Harbor, radical opposition to George III and his ministers had already emerged, not in the colonies but, of all places, in London and not by fringe agitators like John Wilkes, but by, of all people, a peer of the realm--Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond. Allen shows that Richmond and his pseudonymous band of essayists led the charge for populist constitutional reforms of the monarchy and government of England, well before the first shots were heard at Lexington and Concord. What's more, Allen offers evidence suggesting that one of Richmond's collaborators was none other than Thomas Paine, who in later years would set the colonies on fire with his publication of "Common Sense." She argues that Richmond, Paine and others are the authors of the explosive Letters of Junius (1769-1772), which shook the London establishment with their calls for civil rights, popular sovereignty, and limits on the King's powers. In the end, Richmond, true to his aristocratic genes, could not bring himself to call for the overthrow of the monarchy unlike his friend, Thomas Paine. Instead, after reconciling with George III, he joined Rockingham's cabinet where he remained a friend of American independence for the sake of peace in North America.

[Andrea Wenger]

This book argues that the Age of Revolution began in London, not America or France, with radical ideas about the rights of man and popular sovereignty emerging from British society. The book centers on Charles Lennox, the Third Duke of Richmond, a progressive nobleman who, along with Thomas Paine, anonymously authored influential essays that challenged the Crown and advocated for reform.

This book is fascinating, well-researched, and full of interesting new information. I found that it’s better to read a few chapters at a time rather than trying to binge the entire book—the content is rather dense, and the writing style is elevated as opposed to accessible.

In the ARC and the audiobook, the Introduction contained some clear errors. (Mary II of England was the daughter of James II, not the sister; and George III was the great-grandson of George I, not the grandson.) Unfortunately, these errors made me question whether the accuracy of the entire book could be trusted. Nevertheless, this book is an enormous undertaking, and it’s inevitable that a few errors would slip in.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

[Jeffrey Powanda]

A vitally important yet somewhat dry and overlong biography of Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond (1735-1806), the radical duke who secretly bankrolled, organized, and recruited a secret consortium of writers behind the anonymous Letters of Junius, which were critical of King George III, patronized up-and-coming writer Thomas Paine, served in the House of Lords as an opposition leader for years, and worked tirelessly for decades toward British constitutional reform. Richmond, as Allen refers to him, was the first member of the House of Lords to propose recognizing American independence. He later had a falling out with Paine, who proved to be too radical for Richmond's purposes.

Allen has done brilliant historical detective work in uncovering Richmond's secret activities, which certainly could have led to his trial and execution. I've previously found biographies of Paine frustrating because he seemed to have emerged out of thin air to become the bestselling writer of his era. Paine couldn't have achieved anything without the significant support of Richmond and others, as this biography proves.

[Suzi Sullivan]

I listen to most books while reading the physical book at the same time. I’m so glad Danielle was the narrator for her well researched and fantastic historical account of what led to the movement creating America’s government. While a historical accounting might be a big yawn for many, her care to present this in a compelling way makes it a hard book to put down. It is an important read and totally enjoyable!!

[Leo]

Im interested in most things history and choose to request this audiobook trough netgally. I tought it sounded like a well researched and through nonfiction. But it seems im not as interested in this particular part of history. The beginning and political start of US and their history with UK. Wich isnt the fault of the book. 3.5 stars.

[Adam Leader]

I absolutely loved this. Incredibly relevant to today’s American politics. Completely unknown history to me. The details about Thomas Payne were fascinating. Amazing story intricately told. Already starting to reread it.

[Carl]

Well written, comprehensive account of the life of Charles Lennox. I learned a lot about the political scene in Britain in the mid 1700s and how much unrest there was.

[Sam Taylor]

Listened - An interesting and largely forgotten character of history