Saul David
Cry Freedom
Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery
By Adam Hochschild
Macmillan 431pp £20 order from our bookshop
Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees
By Caroline Moorehead
Chatto & Windus 302pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
On 22 May 1787 twelve men – nine Quakers and three Anglicans – met at a central London printing shop to form a committee whose sole aim was the abolition of the British slave trade. Within twenty years, despite the opposition of the powerful West Indian lobby, they had achieved their objective. In 1834 the existing slaves of the British Empire were emancipated. It is an extraordinary tale, and Adam Hochschild, prize-winning author of King Leopold’s Ghost, does it full justice.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The river’s desecration mirrors Colombia’s long history of violence: "for years we treated it like a sewer," says Ahmed, a survivor of a particularly brutal paramilitary massacre, "just like we treated each other".'
Patrick Wilcken on the Magdalena.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/troubled-waters-3
It's 'all lively and entertaining but rather too black and white. Her account of British politics and the success of the Brexit campaign verges on the cartoonish.'
@David_Goodhart on Anne Applebaum's 'Twilight on Democracy'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-tale-of-two-parties
'Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, once asked Isaiah Berlin who his ideal dinner guest would be. Without hesitation Berlin exclaimed, ‘William James!’'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-pragmatists-progress