Thomas Harding & Myrtle Peterkin (14:00)

When best-selling author of The House by the Lake, Thomas Harding, discovered that his mother’s family had profited from plantations worked by enslaved people of African descent in the British colony of Demerara, now Guyana, what began as an interrogation into his ancestors’ commercial choices became a quest to learn more about Britain’s role in slavery.

Myrtle Peterkin, who was born on a sugar plantation in Guyana, migrated to Glasgow in 1979, becoming Scotland’s first black, female, consultant haematologist. Her discovery of Glasgow’s massive role in the slave trade has led her also to spread awareness about slavery to today’s young people.

In conversation with Alex Renton, author of Blood Legacy, Peterkin and Harding will examine key moments in Guyana’s story, especially the 1823 Demerara Uprising through the eyes of the enslaved man Jack Gladstone, the missionary John Smith, the colonist John Cheveley, and the politician and slaveholder John Gladstone, father of a future prime minister.

Together they will examine the legacy we have been left with - cultural, political and moral – and whether future generations of those who benefitted from slavery need to acknowledge and take responsibility for the White Debt.

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