Tom Paine blunder in visitor guide

A newly published Enjoy Sussex visitor guide describes the famous radical author from Thetford and Lewes as an American!

Twenty thousand copies of the guide have been printed, so it will at least a year before a re-print can correct the error.

Lewes District Council chairman Marina Pepper helped launch the new guide, which includes an accommodation and attraction guide, amid fanfare at the Lewes Tourist Information Centre on January 8.

The guide was jointly produced by district councils in Lewes, Wealden, Horsham and Mid Sussex

The opening paragraph reads in part that illustrious people lived or died in the area, 'from the famous Quaker, Willian Penn of Pennsylvania, to the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and from the famous author Hilaire Belloc to American radicalist Tom Paine'.

Paine, author of the Rights of Man, did indeed live in America for a time - after leaving England, his mother country.

Said Lewes District Council leader Cllr Ann de Vecchi: 'It will be corrected when we re-print, which will not be for some time.

'It is embarrassing, but there's not much we can do about it now.'

Tom Paine was aged 31 when he first rode into Lewes in 1768 to take up a post as excise officer.

In the following six years his time as a member of the Headstrong debating club, based at the White Hart, provided him with the opportunity to distil many of his radical ideas.

He lived during that time at Bull Houe in the High Street.