Acknowledging this story for the first time has led to new discoveries about the objects Fitzwilliam donated, the people who collected them, and the cultures that created them.

Statues were toppled, streets renamed and venerable British institutions such as the Bank of England were forced to reckon with their ties to the slave trade.In fact, it became the catalyst for the largest wave of anti-racist protests in British history, taking place in more than 260 towns and cities last summer. Honestly there is no other podcast out there like this and which manage such delicate and challenging issues in such a human and even funny way. Daley and Goll explain why we cannot properly address racism in Britain today unless Black disabled people are front and centre of any struggle. Demonstrators carried handmade placards with the names of black Britons killed by the British police; they demanded justice for members of the Windrush generation threatened with deportation and the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire; they decried the high Covid-19 death rate among communities of colour. Contributors include David Olusoga, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Kit de Waal, Dr Anne-Marie-Imafidon, Sir David Adjaye, Leroy Logan and Professor Kehinde Andrews.

The killing of George Floyd by a white police officer may have taken place thousands of miles away, but his agonising cry – “I can’t breathe” – reverberated in the UK, too. It is clear, though, that the response to last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests must go beyond just representation. So large is the political crisis to which the book is responding that some of the essays only manage to scratch the surface of their subject, while others at times feel repetitive. Too often there is “one person of colour to argue for a policy that would deny their own parents entry into the UK versus another politician of colour arguing for policies that would benefit other people of colour”.This week we discuss why Black British Disabled People Matter with Michelle Daley and Katouche Goll, both leading campaigners for Black disability rights for people in Britain.

The essays are most effective when the authors use their experiences and expertise to address a specific problem. The book comprises essays from 19 prominent black figures, including the historian David Olusoga, the architect David Adjaye, the Labour MP Dawn Butler and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered teenager Stephen. I am ageless in the way that people in the public eye often are frozen in time by a single event … I am also ageless because people don’t always see me as human.

As the government’s national archive for England, Wales and the United Kingdom, The National Archives hold over 1,000 years of the nation’s records for everyone to discover and use. But Fitzwilliam’s generosity was only possible because of the wealth his grandfather accumulated in part through the transatlantic slave trade.

A podcast investigating what it means to be Black in Britain today, from exposing the racism to celebrating the joy in every walk of life. This week we discuss why Black British Food Matters with Zoe Adjonyoh, founder of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen and award-winning food journalist Melissa Thompson. This is the podcast where we explore why and how Black British lives matter –What it means to be Black and British, our culture, our joy and our pain.Our guests talk about the reality behind the shocking stats, their own personal mental health experiences and whether living in Britain is bad for our mental health. This plea to recognise black Britons’ humanity recurs throughout the book, from Marverine Cole’s account of mental ill-health, which deconstructs the devastating consequences of the “strong Black woman” stereotype, to Ryder’s closing essay, which describes his own horrific encounters with the police.