Hollywood has a nasty habit of distorting history and telling falsehoods about the past in order to pander to the cultural prejudices and political leanings of its target audience. Few cinemagoers will forget the egregious exaggerations and untruths presented to them in Braveheart (1997) and The Patriot (2000), both of which wantonly perverted chapters in history for their own cynical ends.

Garfield said he hoped the movie would leave billionaires ‘scared shitless’

Garfield said he hoped the movie would leave billionaires ‘scared shitless’

With this in mind, one can hardly expect a forthcoming movie depicting the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, The Uprising, to be any better. To judge by comments made by a star of the film, Andrew Garfield, who plays a farmer in the rebellion that emerged in East Anglia, Essex and Kent in the reign of Richard II, this looks set to be a cinematic outing aimed at the kind of people who sympathise with Zack Polanski or Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, both of whom are fond of inveighing against ‘billionaires’ and ‘neoliberalism’. Garfield remarked this week that he hoped the movie about the uprising would be ‘galvanising’ and ‘awakening’ for audiences and leave billionaires ‘scared shitless’.

Such sentiments are disconcerting, because in truth the Peasants’ Revolt was not a typically working-class event and barely involved any people we would identify today as peasants. As practically all history books on the event will tell you, the name itself was misleading. It was foremost a rebellion on behalf of a rural and urban middle class of skilled artisans, mobile labourers,........

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