The Ragged Trouser Press is a blog which has inconsistently traced my thoughts and enthusiasms since I started tinkering with ways to use digital technology for self-publishing in about 2009, when I started messing about with something called the Cornwall Tribune. In 2010 I returned to the BBC who kindly let me blog there for a few years, before realising how expensive I was. I then continued to hack away under my own label, The Ragged Trouser Press. Since late 2015, the blog has recorded my weekly column for the Cornish Guardian, reflecting on rural life. The Cornish Guardian continues to publish this column every Wednesday.
The Ragged Trouser Press welcomes your comments. The site is owned by Ragged Trouser Productions Ltd, a film and television production company whose registered address is West End, Station Road, St Mabyn, BODMIN, Cornwall, PL30 3BN, United Kingdom. Email: theboss@raggedtrouser.com For the avoidance of doubt, any views expressed on this blog are those of the owner and contributors, and not any other organisation, specifically anyone who might be vaguely employing me right now.
Why the "Ragged Trouser" Press?
Credit where it's due - the inspiration comes from that wonderful book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (right). The accuracy and honesty with which the book describes the relationship between the powerful and the powerless has made it that rare thing - political writing as genuine art. Tressell, whose real name was Robert Noonan, completed his 1,600-page handwritten manuscript in 1910. Three potential publishers rejected it before the 41-year-old Tressell died of lung disease in 1911 and was buried in a mass grave with other paupers in Liverpool. In 1914 a publisher paid £25 for the rights, but it was not until 1955 that a full edition (with all the socialist ideology restored) finally saw the light of day. If only Tressell had known about blogging!
