Latest comments on Blood Legacy

William Dalrymple, historian and author

‘Blood Legacy is a moving, timely, well-written and strikingly thoughtful book that makes an important contribution to the growing debate on the horrors that accompanied Britain's empire building. Alex Renton's forensic and remarkably honest analysis of his own family papers, and the profound darkness they contain, highlights our continuing failure to acknowledge the extreme toxicity of so much of our Imperial history.’

Professor Sir Geoff Palmer, scientist and activist

‘A fascinating family history of profit and loss made during slavery in the Caribbean. This book is truth not fiction.’

Dr Miranda Kaufmann, historian and author

‘In this unflinching, fascinating and very human account, drawn from his own family papers, Alex Renton takes a crucial first step towards reparation, by acknowledging the cruel reality of his ancestors’ callous exploitation of enslaved people’s labour from afar; detailing the damage done, and both asking and beginning to answer the question of what can be done to purge these sins and their legacies today.’

Professor Diana Paton, historian and author

“Moving and deeply researched, Alex Renton's account of his ancestors' slaveholding brings home the everyday brutality of Caribbean slavery and its contribution to the making of Britain both then and since. Blood Legacy sets the ordinariness of slaveholding in the eighteenth-century monied world alongside accounts of the extraordinary lives of those they owned. This is a book that asks white Britons to look hard at our past and its consequences in the present.”

Richard Holloway, author and former Bishop of Edinburgh

“This moving and powerful book asks one of the most important moral questions of our age: how are we to repair the historic damage done by transatlantic slavery? Reparation is the answer, but it is too grudging a word. We should not heal the sins of our past because we are pressured to do so. We should do it joyfully, because it is the right thing to do.”

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, author of Island People: The Caribbean and the World 

‘Alex Renton’s Blood Legacy is destined to at once prompt and help shape an urgent public conversation, long overdue, that we can only hope will be guided by Renton’s core contention here: that it’s the responsibility of all of us who belong to societies shaped by the Triangle Trade not merely to confront the torrid legacies of slavery, but to change them. Remarkably researched, searchingly told, this is an exemplary book—and a necessary one.’

George Alagiah, author and broadcaster

‘Alex Renton’s Blood Legacy is far more than one man’s mea culpa for his family’s role in the slave trade and the benefits bestowed on him as a result. It asks that most urgent of moral questions: what do I do about it now? Renton is clear, if we cannot change our past we can certainly do something about the consequences that still flow from it – the racism, the inequality and injustice that still blights the lives of the descendants of those who were once enslaved. Blood Legacy is a full frontal challenge to those who enjoy a comfortable, liberal life – it’s time to stand up and be counted.’

Gavin Francis, author of Dream Islands

‘The kind of history I wish they’d taught me in school; Renton takes the yellowed old papers from his grandfather’s study and with them weaves a vivid, gripping, modern retelling of a historical abomination. I was fascinated by the glimpses of life for a noble family in eighteenth century Scotland, each jockeying for position in the new political landscape following the Union and the failed Jacobite rebellion. Unearthing even a portion of the stories of the slaves Renton’s family bought, transported, exploited and ultimately killed, feels like a necessary first step towards a modest degree of redemption.’