A beautiful idea : history of the Freedom Press anarchists ; the story of Britain's oldest anarchist publisher
Rob Ray (Author)
Freedom Press is the oldest anarchist publishing house in the English-speaking world. Founded in 1886, the press has weathered wars, police raids, fascist attacks and innumerable internal crises while publishing some of the world's most important libertarian thinkers, from Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman to Colin Ward and Murray Bookchin. 2018 marks 50 years since the Press bought its current home in Angel Alley, and to celebrate the occasion Freedom published A Beautiful Idea, attempting to draw out a narrative from its densely-packed history. Freedom was there to fight the corner of the Haymarket Martyrs in its first years and to stand against the needless slaughter of World War I. It took up the call in the Spanish Civil War, and its shop was bombed by the Luftwaffe in World War II. Its editors were arrested for sedition as the war ended, and provided some of the most influential libertarian writers of the post-war period. A mainstay of the 1960s revival, firebombed by the Nazis during the street confrontations of the 1980s, again in the 2010s - like the anarchist movement itself, Freedom may be small, but its story is huge. -- (from publisher)
Print Book, English, 2018
First edition
Freedom Press, London, 2018