Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine. I am here today with the Rickard Sisters, Sophie and Scarlet. Together, they have produced two wonderful graphic novels chronicling 19th and early 20th century radical movements.

They produced adaptations of the novels, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, and No Surrender.

And we are going to talk to them today about both. So Sophie and Scarlett,

thank you so much for joining us on current affairs today. Hello. Thank you very much for having us.

Well, I'm so delighted because I got the ragged trousers philanthropists as a gift and I couldn't

believe it when I saw it, because I had

seen the novel. I had never gotten through the novel, because it's pretty big, but it's a

classic of socialist literature, and then to have this delightful, funny, beautiful graphic novel adaptation that is like nothing else I've ever seen

in the world was just such a wonderful present to receive. I guess, though, where I want to start

is by asking you about both books together, because they pair very well. They have a similar

aesthetic. They are based on, you know, the one is about, well,

the novel is about kind of socialism and takes place among painters in the early 1900s, and then

No Surrender is about the Suffragette movement. What is it about these kind of this early 20th century radical novels that appeals to you both so much?

So the two books, as you say, are siblings. The Ragged Tows of Philanthropist is the older brother.

And like you say, it's a very famous book and it's generally discussed as a book about men at work.

We do find that when people talk about the ragged trousered philanthropist, they tend to only

refer to about the first third, and because if we're all being honest, it's really hard to read.

And that was one of the motivations for

adapting it into a graphic novel. So in our version, it's sequential art, like reading a comic,

and the only text is dialogue. So in fact, the Ragged Trial of Philanthropist is about the whole

community, because it's about the families of those men who happen to know each other because

they work together.

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