Mind-bogglingly extensive site here about Speakers' Corner.
Blurb says:
"Speakers' Corner in London's Hyde Park is one of the greatest places in the Universe.
The Web site is intended to allow you to explore and understand Speakers' Corner. We will to reach into the future and the past, combining the oratory, discussion, debate, humour and madness, that has sustained Speakers' Corner for over a hundred and fifty years.
Amongst those who have attended meetings here, are the some of the most influential figures in world history such as Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and V.I. Lenin. Oliver Cromwell's corpse was hung up here in a cage for public display, as a warning to others who might wish to abolish the Monarchy. This was of course in the days before Speakers' Corner, when "Tyburn", one of the "hanging fields" of London was located there.
Others whose ghosts haunt this corner include William Morris, George Orwell, the Pankhursts, C.L.R. James, Benn Tillet, Marcus Garvey, and a star-spangled cast of millions more who shall remain unmentioned, excepting the immovable Lord Soper, who was still speaking till three weeks before he died at 95 years of age.
Speakers' Corner has had a more powerful influence than any "university" in the world, because here there are no entry requirements, no rules of intellectual formality and above all, no class restrictions. It is, as Leslie James the Hyde Park pamphleteer wrote, a fitting location to represent "the century of the common man."
Includes stacks of real audio downloads.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment