NEW TOLPUDDLE BOOK BRINGS HOPE TO READERS ACROSS BRITAIN
November 8, 2017: Author and journalist Alan Gallop will be meeting readers and signing copies of his new book ‘Six for the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ at Waterstone’s bookshop 45-46 South Street, Dorchester on Saturday November 11 between 10.00am and 12.00 mid-day.
The book was originally launched at the Tolpuddle Festival in June where it sold over 100 copies and since then has been selling well in bookshops and on websites across the country. It has sold particularly well to residents in the village of Tolpuddle where most of the story takes place about six agricultural labourers who were arrested for pledging an illegal oath at a trade union meeting in 1834 and were sentenced to seven years in penal colonies in Australia and Tasmania.
“Since the book came out in the summer I have received dozens of letters from people all over the country who have identified with the plight of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, including a prisoner in a jail in Leeds,” said Alan, from Ashford in Surrey. “He told me that the martyr’s story had given him hope that when his sentence comes to an end, a new life awaits him just as it eventually did for the six Tolpuddle men wrongly sentenced to penal servitude on the other side of the world who went on to find new lives in Canada on their release.”
