Reviews in the Sunday Times and The Scotsman

‘This is a real mixter-maxter of a book. In parts it is truly fascinating, in parts pedantic, in parts it is provocative and in parts it makes for unbearable reading.’

Stuart Kelly reviewing Blood Legacy in The Scotsman May 13, 2021 - here

‘First, slavery in British possessions continued for far longer. Second, reparations to slaveholders — not, of course, to the slaves — amounted to 40 per cent of the government’s annual budget, about £17 billion in today’s money. It was funded by a loan that was paid off only in 2015. This gargantuan payout allowed many slave-owning families and institutions to build up further huge wealth in the Industrial Revolution — or as they said in Scotland, to go “out of slaves and into railway shares”. It benefited about 50 MPs, a huge swathe of the aristocracy and even Anglican missionary groups.

These embarrassing facts are not going to wither. Why? Because the argument for another kind of reparation, payment from the slaving countries to impoverished Caribbean governments, grows louder all the time. It is going to be an intense debate and this book will be quoted during it.’

Andrew Marr reviewing Blood Legacy in the Sunday Times, May 9 2021 - here (paywall)