When we set up Radical Tea Towel in the early 2010s, we did so with this slightly crazy idea that the effective promotion of radical history could not only be done via new media (beyond books), but could also be a self-funding project. Here we are over a decade later, still going thanks to the support of hundreds of thousands of people in the UK and around the world who supported this idea and are proud to have one of our tea towels in their kitchen.

In turn, we're proud to support projects like the Shelley Memorial Project. We've previously supported other public memorial projects, including statues for Mary Wollstonecraft and Emmeline Pankhurst, along with the ongoing campaign for a Matchgirls statue, and it's been exciting to see these long campaigns come to fruition and result in something tangible. The idea of a memorial is, of course, yet another medium for promoting radical history, and one which is both very public and timeless.

Percy Bysshe Shelley is a great match for our interests and ideals, covering as he does both radical politics and literature. Although he was relatively unknown in his lifetime, Shelley was a deep radical thinker whose ideas challenged many of his era's conventions.

He opposed the divine right of kings and the old aristocratic order, while supporting revolutionary movements and the work of radical figures like Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft (two of many related radical figures who feature in our collection of tea towels). He condemned slavery and expressed solidarity with the oppressed. He supported nonviolent resistance and was brave enough to criticise the violence of the authorities in writing, at a time when the British government was hunting down anyone who risked encouraging a French- or American-style revolution at home. On top of all this political radicalism, Shelley seems to have supported women's rights, free love, vegetarianism and ethical living - hundreds of years before these views became more mainstream.

Shelley was without doubt a utopian idealist. But his idealism survived and he continues to be quoted today, whether that be on a tea towel or from the lips of major politicians.

While his cultural influence lives on, we think it's about time Shelley had a physical presence once again. And what better place for one than in his hometown of Horsham.