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

[Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.)

[Catie · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Andrea Wenger · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Leo · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.