Black and British: A Forgotten History, from the acclaimed historian and star of 'Celebrity Traitors'

by David Olusoga

During the nineteen months from his arrival in 1845 to his departure in April 1847, Frederick Douglass, by his own estimation, lectured on slavery on three hundred occasions, meaning that he spoke publicly against slavery on more days than he was silent. In some ways he completed his development in Britain. Freed from the daily fear of re-enslavement, and able to live a more expansive existence in an unsegregated society, he had the emotional space to evolve intellectually. In January 1846, in a speech in Belfast, he described how he had been ‘persecuted, hunted, outraged in America, I have come to England, and behold the change! A chattel becomes a man. I breathe. I am free.’29