Renowned historian Sheila Rowbotham will discuss her new book Rebel Crossings which relates the interweaving lives of four women and two men as they journey from Britain to America. Radicalised by the rise of socialism, Helena Born, Miriam Daniell, Gertrude Dix, Robert Nicol and William Bailie cross the Atlantic dreaming of liberty and equality. All six are part of a wider historical search for self-fulfillment and an alternative to a cruelly competitive capitalism. These lives bring fresh slants on political and cultural movements and influential individuals like Walt Whitman, Eleanor Marx, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, Patrick Geddes and Benjamin Tucker.