Book
Requiem for a Patriot
First published 1988
In 1839 the Chartist leader John Frost becomes the focus of a mass mobilisation in south-east Wales that culminates in the Newport Rising. Workers march through rain towards the town, carrying political demands into a confrontation with armed authority that will end in deaths, arrests and treason trials.
Cordell approaches the rising as a tragedy produced by political exclusion and industrial grievance rather than as an isolated riot. Frost’s leadership gives the novel a direct link to the historical Chartist movement, while fictional participants reveal the fear and hope of people asked to risk everything for reform. The failure at Newport becomes a requiem for one revolutionary possibility and a defining episode in Welsh working-class history.
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