Slavery
The great betrayal
Racism in Britain may be less acute than in America or even France, but the false promises made to the Windrush generation have left a bitter aftermath
Heritable guilt is in vogue
I made a poor excuse for a Presbyterian even as a kid. I resented religious indoctrination every precious school-free Sunday.…
Resculpting the past
Rather than tearing statues down, Hew Locke believes in reworking them to highlight their place in our imperial history. Stuart Jeffries speaks to him
Wings of desire
In 2014, an exhibition of watercolours by the renowned avian artist, John James Audubon, opened in New York. The reviews,…
Tsunami of piffle
Deep breath. Here goes. Winsome Pinnock’s new play about Turner opens with one of the most confusing and illogical scenes…
The best of British
There was certainly no lack of variety among new TV dramas this week, with a standard British thriller up against…
The distortion of British history
The British Museum has announced the appointment of a curator to study the history of its own collections. On the…
The Spectator’s Notes
The National Trust has brought out its ‘Interim Report’, with the clumsy title ‘Addressing our histories of colonialism and historic…
Should Kamala Harris pay reparations?
What do Stokely Carmichael, Harry Belafonte, Colin Powell, Sidney Poitier and Busta Rhymes have in common? And how are Beyoncé,…
Italy owes Wales reparations for the wrongs of the Roman Empire
There’s talk of reparations in the air. Lobbyists from around the world are demanding sin-payments from former colonial powers. Let…
Human soup
The earliest depictions of the Americas were eye-popping, and shaped European art, says Laura Gascoigne
Fear and loathing in Jamaica: Caribbean slaves turn the whip on their masters
In the shadows of the British Enlightenment lurked the Caribbean sugar plantations. Masters routinely raped their slaves, punished minor wrongdoings…
Anglo-Saxons deserve reparations for the Norman Conquest
Restorative justice for the victims of colonialism is an idea whose time has come. A few years ago, the Indian…
Nyong’o is spellbinding but the plot is ultimately baffling: Us reviewed
Us is a second feature from Jordan Peele after his marvellous debut Get Out, which was more brilliantly satirical than…
Whatever America is searching for, Trump isn’t providing it
Donald J. Trump has sparked some soul- searching among US historians: has this happened before? Does it mean America has…
The burden of freedom: Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan, reviewed
It’s 1830, and among the sugar cane of Faith Plantation in Barbados, suicide seems like the only way out. Decapitations…
Brazil: a country fizzing with excitement
As the great Bossa Nova musician Tom Jobim liked to say, Brazil is not for beginners. This tends to be…
A Shout in the Ruins, by Kevin Powers, reviewed
We’re in Virginia, in the 1850s. A girl called Emily is tormenting her dog, Champion, and her father’s teenage slave,…
Brotherly love
Jane Harris’s novels often focus on the disenfranchised: a maid in The Observations, a woman reduced by spinsterhood in the…
Raising Cain
It is a pretty safe bet that for every 1,000 people who know of William Wilberforce, no more than the…
Must Colston fall?
Edward Colston, mega-rich philanthropist around the year 1700, is the nearest thing Bristol has to a patron saint. The largest…
Stitches in time
When Martha Ann Ricks was 76 she travelled from her home in Liberia to London to meet Queen Victoria. The…
Wise women in wikuoms
You can’t see the wood for the trees in Annie Proulx’s epic novel of logging and deforestation in North America, says Philip Hensher
Going global
We can all identify decades in which the world moved forward. Wars are not entirely negative experiences: the social and…
High life
To Cleveland, Ohio, where middle America’s middle class begins its great Midwest sprawl. I’ve always wanted to visit Cleveland because…
