The Oxfordshire rising of 1596 has been brought back to life over 400 years later in its new rewriting by SJ Bradley.

‘Resist: Stories of Uprising’ is a new collection of 20 retellings of British protest history.

The book is written by authors such as Kamila Shamsie, Luan Goldie, Eley Williams, Lucy Caldwell and SJ Bradley, author of the chapter on the Oxfordshire rising.

The protests in Resist tell the stories of events from Boudicca’s Revolt in 45 AD all the way to the Grenfell Tower tragedy of 2017.

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The Oxfordshire rising, an historic event in protest history, took place in November 21, 1596, on Enslow Hill.

The rising saw a small group of impoverished men meet during a time of bad harvest and poverty worsened by a fall in wages.

The men had a plan to seize weapons and armour and march in London.

However, without getting the support they assumed they were going to get, the men were arrested and tortured, with two of them finally hanged.

Asked how her re-telling of the event re-contextualised current, similar issues, Ms Bradley said: "One of the things that really interested me in this story was it parallels with our lives today.

"During the 1590s, peasants were reliant on their land to feed themselves, and dependent on the wealthy aristocracy for paid work.

"During the period immediately before the Enslow Rising, The Enclosures Act meant that wealthy landowners in the Oxfordshire area had ‘enclosed’ more and more land for their own use, greatly decreasing the amount available for peasants.”

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She continued: “Whilst lots has improved since then – we have a better legal system for one, meaning more equitable access to justice, and improved access to education – some things have stayed the same or got worse. We’ve got people in this country who are in work and using food banks, whilst the super rich can use the capital they already have, and exploit the labour of others, to get even more super rich than they already are.”

Professor John Walter from Essex University is the historian for the collection of protest history stories.

He said: “ It was an interesting project because a lot of what happens seems relevant to the present: we keep talking about democracy and the stories in the book were not set in a democracy.

"Now we have an age of austerity, and that is one of the themes that runs through the book – there was starvation and poverty. They had to take to the streets because there voices were not heard.”

He continued: “I think politicians could do with reading it; it could be a wake-up call for them today and maybe they would then think more carefully.”

Professor Walter highlighted that the book is not about the elite or royalty, it is about our ancestors and the people who did not have a voice.