As promised – only 100 words on why I want to buy and read this:

Scotland’s role in the slave trade has two contradictory sides. Glasgow streets, commemorating tobacco lords (Glassford, Ingram, Buchanan) highlight the vast commercial benefits derived from tobacco. Likewise West Indies islands such as Virginia, Jamaica and Tobago. 

I am ashamed of this history of complicity.

But there’s another side, represented by campaigners and protesters like Zachary Macaulay. Tireless fighters confronting powerful vested interests, excoriating politically expedient rationales, lambasting their ethical emptiness, exposing the theological scandal of a so-called Christian nation founding prosperity on oppression. 

I am proud of this history of dissent.

Ashamed – proud – I need to understand both sides.