Private Eye founder Richard Ingrams’s book on arguably our first journalist gives us many invaluable lessons, writes Geoffrey Goodman

The Life and Adventures of William Cobbett by
Richard Ingrams, HarperCollins, £20

HE was arguably, the most remarkable radical writer/polymath in English history and possibly the original controversial trenchant journalist – the man who set a template for all subsequent bellowings of the printed word in demanding the transformation of society for the benefit of the common people.
His prime concern was to oppose ‘The Thing’ – his label for the establishment, oiled with corruption. His name was not Thomas Paine nor even Daniel Defoe but William Cobbett.
Many learned literary classics have been written about Cobbett for more than a century claiming him as the precursor of early radicalism across the entire political spectrum and naming him as the “first modern journalist”.
It is difficult to believe there is much new to say about this extraordinary man: yet Richard Ingrams, founding editor of Private Eye, has succeeded.
He has produced a surprisingly fresh and vibrant picture of Cobbett, full of fascinating glimpses of the man whom Ingrams, with considerable skill, brings back to life.
What an extraordinary figure Cobbett was. On his death in 1835 The Times obituary described Cobbett as “a more extraordinary Englishman than any other of his time”. That sounds like hyperbole about an Englishman living at the time of Pitt, Liverpool and Nelson. But Ingrams’ book supports The Times’ claim.
He was self educated and joined the army to see and learn about the world.
So what was it about this poor farm boy born in Farnham, Surrey, in 1763 amid rural poverty that turned him into a unique figure of his period?
Ingrams, wisely, chooses not to offer a simple answer to this question. Instead he notes that Cobbett was a monumental egotist who regarded anyone who disagreed with him as a fool, corrupt or both. His burning objective was to sustain continuous warfare on ‘The Thing’ and the way it regarded and treated the common people. He dedicated his life to changing the system.
In this cause he launched his famous Weekly Political Register which began life as a daily newspaper called Porcupine in October 1800.
It was started with £450 of his own money based in modest office just off the Strand.
Cobbett’s earliest journalism began while he was living briefly in Philadelphia in the 1790s where he wrote freely and fiercely against American supporters of the French Revolution.
Cobbett passionately denounced Napoleonic policy since he thought military authoritarianism was as objectionable as the British elite.
Yet, ever the paradox, Cobbett’s persistent clamour for major social and political reform often led him to be cast as a Jacobin despite his tub-thumping criticism of the French Revolution and the Terror.
This was typical of Cobbett’s refusal to be politically typecast. A complex man of firm, old-fashioned patriotism with a devotion to British standards of moral justice, he was almost like a Gladstonian Liberal.
Despite his limited schooling, Cobbett had 20 books published dealing farming, gardening (his great love), grammar, education, the Reformation, corrupt behaviour of judges and judicial system, monarchy, clergy and his contempt for the way Parliament behaved.
On top of this he spent 33 years producing and writing a large part of his Political Register – for which he was three times prosecuted by government for seditious libel.
He spent two years in Newgate jail and twice had to escape to America to avoid further imprisonment.
Although bankrupted and physically threatened when he several times stood for Parliament he nonetheless throughout all tribulation remained a devoted husband and father. His wife Nancy had 14 pregnancies because Cobbett didn’t believe in birth control.
He persistently and contemptuously rejected all government attempts to buy him with money and honours.
Even his few friends among the influential radicals of the day often found Cobbett’s single-mindedness tiresome and eventually he fell out with most of them.
Then came a psychological turning point: in 1827 his beloved wife Nancy attempted suicide at the age of 53.
Cobbett never forgave her and was so outraged that he broke with his family to live alone surrounded only by a few helpers on a small farm estate in Surrey.
He was eventually elected as MP for Oldham in 1832 in the wake of Russell’s first Great Reform Bill – for which Cobbett had fought for so long.
By then he was a sick and ailing man and almost certainly mentally confused.
He even revelled at the destruction by fire in 1834 of the old Houses of Parliament, which Cobbett saw as divine retribution against those who had spent so long denying the British proper justice. It was a sad and depressing finale when he died in June 1835 to be buried in pouring rain in Farnham.
The sole beneficiary of his will was his son William, the only son to stay with him after the family break-up of 1833.
Ingrams’ book brings it all back to life – and we owe him a debt for that achievement.

• Geoffrey Goodman was the founding editor of British Journalism Review and currently its emeritus chairman. He was also formerly Industrial Editor and Assistant Editor of the Daily Mirror.