Bone of contention Things could be worse. He died in 1809 in the fledgling States and was buried there. But William Cobbett, fellow radical and admirer, fetched Paine's bones back to Britain where he tried and failed to set up a memorial. Not that Paine would mind. His legacy is the vigour and immediacy of his democratic ideas, as powerful today as in the days when he lived and died.
Bones have nothing to do with such survival.