It came as a shock when I received a call from a friend to inform me that some of my forebears from many, many moons ago have been named and shamed as profiting from the slave trade.

This wasn’t the result of the publication of new information, nor was it the product of assiduous research. It was, in fact, a declaration made by the National Trust, the charity to which Arthur Onslow, the sixth Earl, donated his home, Clandon Park, in 1956. At that time, his sister donated about £1 million in today’s money — the Onslows were too cash-strapped to come up with the resources that the National Trust required to take on the property….

Read the full article on the Critic Magazine website here.