00:02:58.320um slavery and the abolition the beginning of the abolition of slavery the power of of just
00:03:04.360everyday people poor people black people to foment change and so I was just really excited to have
00:03:11.440Elle on the podcast this book is great and I do want to mention so like some other sometimes we
00:03:16.300have authors on the show who are in the UK and their books are only available in the UK and this
00:03:22.380is one of those situations so remember remember by Elle Macrae you can get if you're in any of the
00:03:27.080Commonwealth nations. But then also if you want to get it and you live in, for instance, America
00:03:32.200or in Canada, if you go to Waterstones website, which is a bookseller in the UK, they ship
00:03:38.460internationally. There's some other places that ship internationally. I'm sure you can find some
00:03:42.740other options so you can get your hands on this book, which is such a good book. And I'm just so
00:03:46.960honored and delighted that Elle joined me for this discussion and so enjoy this conversation
00:03:51.460with Remember Remember author Elle Macri.
00:03:57.080So I'm so excited to be joined today by Elle Macrae, author of Remember, Remember, Welcome, Elle.
00:04:07.080Hi, I'm so happy to be here. Nice to see you, Anne.
00:04:10.100I'm really excited to talk to you as I just when we were emailing, talking about doing this
00:04:15.260interview, when I saw you speak at the Edinburgh Literary Festival and you were describing your
00:04:20.120book, I thought this is so similar to what I'm talking about on my podcast, this series, just
00:04:25.020about the revolutions in the 18th century and how the involvement of Black people, basically,
00:04:33.380in so many things in the Caribbean, but also in their involvement in French Revolution and
00:04:39.280everything that was happening in England. And I just thought the research you did for this book
00:04:43.200seems really similar to what I want to talk about on this podcast. And then also the book is really
00:04:48.700good. So I want people to know about it. So I'm happy to have you here. Well, thank you.
00:04:53.540So we're going to talk about the book, obviously, and your research as well. But before you describe the plot of the book, bearing in mind a lot of people listening to this are not in the UK, could you explain what the gunpowder plot was and Guy Fawkes?
00:05:09.640Sure. So I guess for context, we would need to go all the way back to the 16th, early 17th century.
00:05:18.500So we are in England, we're fresh out of the Tudor period, where England had just become one of the first European countries to break away from Catholicism in favour of Protestantism.
00:05:30.380You know, Henry VIII wanting to divorce his wife.
00:05:32.880we saw throughout the Tudor period like the kind of rapid and violent erosion of Catholic rights
00:05:40.360so between Henry VIII and Elizabeth I so to put that in context in 1558 at the start of the Tudor
00:05:46.560period there were like three million people in England and pretty much all of them are Catholic
00:05:49.760and by the end of Elizabeth I's reign there are only 40,000 Catholics left in England which is
00:05:57.540crazy over a period of about 60 years. So after the end of Elizabeth I's reign, James I ascended
00:06:05.320to the throne, where the Catholics thought that their rights would start to be reinstated because
00:06:10.000the new king, James I, his wife, was originally a Catholic. But that wasn't to be. So in 1604,
00:06:18.300James I gave a speech which essentially said that he detested the Catholic faith,
00:06:22.620And he ordered every single Catholic priest to leave the country. He made it illegal to practice Catholicism and so many other kind of dehumanizing things.
00:06:32.400And this led to the radicalization of around a dozen Catholics who became the gunpowder plot conspirators.
00:06:40.460They were led by a really wealthy man called Robert Catesby, who was like a landed gentry kind of guy.
00:06:47.280His family had been known for joining different kind of failed coups over the decades.
00:06:52.620But the most notable conspirator that we all kind of remember in England is Guy Fawkes.
00:06:58.760So Catesby, Guy Fawkes and around 10 different conspirators came up with this plan to remove James I as king and reinstate Catholic rule in Britain.
00:07:09.200So their plan essentially was to blow up Parliament on the day that everyone would meet there.0.77
00:07:14.920So this is the day that Parliament opens. So you get all of the clergy, you get all of the lords,
00:07:22.420you get all of the members of parliament and they're all gathering there in one place one day
00:07:25.920it took them 12 months to plan and they got all 12 barrels of gunpowder in place um but just before
00:07:32.660their plan was due to just before their plan was due to happen one of the conspirators uh got cold
00:07:40.100feet and they started feeling really guilty that one of their relatives um a lord called francis
00:07:46.260tresham was going to be in parliament that day so he would have been responsible for the death of his
00:07:50.960own family member so he sent Tresham a letter saying don't come to parliament this day this
00:07:56.860obviously got his spidey senses tingling he alerted the authorities alerted the king who then
00:08:02.840discovered Guy Fawkes with all these 12 barrels of gunpowder Guy Fawkes is arrested tortured for
00:08:09.080days and days on end ends up confessing and giving up the names of his co-conspirators
00:08:14.020they were each sentenced to death and then um all of this kind of happened on november the 5th
00:08:20.9201605 and every november the 5th since then in england or in the uk we commemorate i was going
00:08:28.660to say celebrate that's not the right word we commemorate this day this story of this failed
00:08:32.860assassination attempt um as both a warning and a reminder of the consequences of a coup or the
00:08:40.580consequences of attempting a revolution it's a really stark reminder but it's also a story of
00:08:47.520desperation and how when peaceful acts of resistance constantly fall on deaf ears it
00:08:54.840kind of leads to someone kind of considering how far they'll go to to change things when they feel
00:09:01.060like they have no voice and no other alternative it's a really interesting piece of british history
00:09:05.080it's kind of folkloric now and it was one of the big inspirations behind remember remember
00:09:10.080well that's the thing so your book is called remember remember can you talk about the rhyme
00:09:14.400the that that comes from yeah so in viva vendetta there's uh the rhyme and we also say the rhyme
00:09:21.520kind of everywhere in the uk on the 5th of november which is remember remember the 5th of
00:09:26.160november the gunpowder treason and plot i know of no reason why the gunpowder treason will ever be
00:09:32.300forgot um and that's kind of a theme that kind of comes throughout the novel in remember remember
00:09:38.360obviously of course the title obviously it was inspired by the gunpowder plot but it's also
00:09:43.220called remember remember because the story is as well as being inspired by the gunpowder plot it's
00:09:47.840more about uh the injustices that were inflicted upon black people in england and across the
00:09:54.820commonwealth during the period of slavery ever since um so it's really a story of remembrance
00:10:01.620of all the acts of resistance that have led to the freedoms that we have today and so you start
00:10:07.580the book with like i was learning facts and history from your fictional novel right away
00:10:12.820so you begin the book with a historical note about james somerset can you explain
00:10:16.780what you learned about him um and who he was yes so james um james somerset was originally born
00:10:24.280in africa and then was transported when he was around nine years old to the states um so he was
00:10:29.620in the states he was bought by an enslaver called charles stewart um and they lived in boston for a
00:10:36.240while before moving to London. When he was in London, James was baptised. And there were these
00:10:42.780rumours going around England at the time that if you were baptised as an enslaved person, it meant
00:10:47.720that you were free because there were no Christians. It was impossible to enslave a Christian on
00:10:54.200British shores, apparently. That was the rumour. So James tested this theory by escaping. He ran
00:10:59.580away. And when he was eventually caught, his enslaver tried to force him to go back to work.
00:11:04.760But when James refused, when James said, no, I believe I'm a free man, Charles then forced him aboard the ship called the Anna and Mary, where he was about to send him to the Caribbean because he had no use for an enslaved person who wasn't going to listen to him and wasn't going to do what he was told.
00:11:20.740So as James had been baptised, he then obviously got godparents. His godparents then invoked the help of the abolitionist and lawyer Granville Sharp, who took James's case all the way to the King's Bench, which is the 18th century equivalent of the Supreme Court in Britain.
00:11:40.920James and Granville Sharp then took this case to the courts and it was essentially ruled that it was illegal to enslave a person on British shores, making any black person living in Britain essentially free.
00:11:55.660it was highly debated the efficacy of this law it was highly debated how much people really
00:12:03.740listened to it after the ruling was made but it was the real kind of kickstarter to the abolitionist
00:12:09.500movement in britain and i was really inspired by james's story in his own self-belief and his
00:12:17.420first act of resistance which really led to the abolitionist movement really kicking off
00:12:24.000and i've been um just in my own research and i think we've talked a bit on the podcast too like
00:12:29.340the abolitionist movement in britain like this was decades and decades it wasn't until the mid
00:12:35.48019th century that it actually like that it actually the abolition happened but people
00:12:40.840were fighting for it and this was i was really interested to learn about him because i had never
00:12:45.140heard about about this case um and yeah so sort of just to show i was just reading something else
00:12:52.480where people it was a speaker was talking about how sometimes now people look back at history and
00:12:58.420say oh well it was the time people didn't know any better and it was like this story of james
00:13:02.420semerson his grant his godparents like it shows no people back then knew that slavery was wrong
00:13:07.020yeah of course i mean like i think that's such an interesting point as well so it's not just
00:13:12.500so i guess for context and we're going to talk about this a little bit next but in britain at
00:13:18.920that time there were probably around 20 between 20 000 to 50 000 black people living in britain
00:13:24.100at the time so they were they were becoming more visible and they were becoming more involved in
00:13:29.000in daily life and it wasn't just like a big name abolitionist like ramble sharp and
00:13:36.040granville sharp and william wilberforce who were kind of spearheading the the end of slavery
00:13:41.280it was normal everyday people who were saying actually no this is wrong these people are just
00:13:47.420their fellow human beings and it's completely wrong so i guess an example of that is as long
00:13:53.000with like the quakers uh taking a big role in the abolitionist movement so many women got involved0.93
00:13:58.980in the abolitionist movement too so in the late 18th century so many women started to use their1.00
00:14:05.640own power to kind of make the slave trade less profitable so for example they went they started1.00
00:14:10.580enforcing a boycott of sugar and cotton and other slave traded goods and the end of the slave
00:14:17.240trade really was a giant movement by so many different people black abolitionists lawyers
00:14:24.500women it was yeah it was just normal everyday people who were really starting to change things
00:14:30.980in britain and i think that's such an important thing to to bear in mind that it was like the
00:14:35.760normal everyday people it wasn't just a wealthy lord decided that he was going to do this it was
00:14:41.200the people like from the ground up and that's that's a lot of what we see in your book too which
00:14:45.880is an alternate history but it pivots on a certain point and we'll talk about that in a bit but like
00:14:53.000the the spirit and the vibe of your book is so similar to to the real revolutionaries who are
00:14:59.920fighting at that time about various things um and actually that brings me to my next question so your
00:15:04.980book is set around mostly in the year 1770 in London and what can you tell us about what life
00:15:11.520was like for Black people in that time and place? So I guess 1770 London, it was around the time
00:15:19.880when people were really starting to pay attention to the idea of revolution. It was when
00:15:26.960normal everyday people were starting to think about their own rights and how things could
00:15:32.460be changing. So I guess for context, in the late 18th century, so around 1770, the slave trade was
00:15:39.760about to reach its absolute peak and the economy from the plantations were bringing so much wealth
00:15:47.000into London and were really kind of the lifeblood of British wealth at that time. As the kind of
00:15:53.820people who were owning plantations abroad were starting to return home many of them started to0.89
00:15:59.420bring their enslaved people back with them so that's kind of how we saw like a much larger
00:16:06.020number of black people start I guess just appearing on the streets of London. The majority of them0.87
00:16:11.300were enslaved people but during the late 17th century we saw a big increase in the number of
00:16:17.940people who were black people who were servants, people getting involved in apprenticeships and
00:16:24.180people just doing normal everyday things in London. It was the time when black people started becoming0.62
00:16:31.440more visible in britain it was a time when people started considering another way of black people
00:16:39.020being involved in british society and british culture and i just wanted to mention i remember
00:16:44.360you brought this up at the talk you gave last summer um that there's a misconception today
00:16:51.020that some people assume that black people didn't come to britain until the 1950s with the the
00:16:57.120windrush generation but in fact like what you're talking about there was this influx of people of
00:17:02.600black people coming during the the slave trade era but there's also going all the way back to
00:17:06.960the romans basically like there's black people in britain is not a new thing and that's i'm not
00:17:13.680from there so i didn't know that this was a common misconception but it is that some people think
00:17:17.500there just wasn't black people there until 20th century yeah of course i mean when you think about
00:17:22.120empire at all it means ships coming in and out people traveling across the world going from port0.85
00:17:29.020to port and changing places so of course that means that people settle in new places people
00:17:33.760build lives in other places so there's always been a visible black presence in Britain and
00:17:39.580exactly as you said um there is evidence of a black battalion at Hadrian's Wall which is like
00:17:45.140along the border between Scotland and England so that's Roman era it's a very big misconception
00:17:49.760there are lots of historians now who are starting to change that and it's starting to become more
00:17:54.940known that we have always been here um but it's it's a slow process that is very slightly
00:18:01.820slowly starting to change so the characters like moving into the characters of remember remember
00:18:09.020who are all fictional characters the main characters are all fictional characters right
00:18:15.560yes the main characters are all fictional characters i think the only exception i don't
00:18:21.900think he's a main character but mansfield who was the judge in vincent's case was also the real judge
00:18:28.740who uh ruled on the james somerset case but yeah pretty much everyone else is just inspired by
00:18:34.180historical figures from the period yeah so well exactly like i could tell just from reading the
00:18:40.640books from my own research and just from the way that you wrote it i'm like this is clearly like
00:18:44.900you did so much you did so much research on this like it feels for instance so the character of
00:18:50.600vincent um so the the main character of the book is delphine vincent is her brother and he is a
00:18:56.300black man who is a successful boxer and i thought oh yeah no because i visited the uh the national
00:19:01.860portrait gallery when i was in london and there was a big uh it was sort of like uh i don't know
00:19:07.800it was almost like a paper mache collage that had belonged to lord byron and it was just a famous
00:23:06.700Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust.
00:23:11.720Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight.
00:23:19.620But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins.
00:23:23.940This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.
00:23:27.120Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job.
00:23:33.320This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make.
00:23:40.880This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.
00:23:45.620Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day.
00:23:56.160See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.
00:24:26.160the lore, there is nothing we don't cover on our show.
00:28:11.660And so how did those characters inspire the female characters in your book?
00:28:15.400Well, I suppose as much as I've spoken about really influential Black Britons or Black male revolutionaries, Black male narratives are the predominant slave narratives and slave stories that we've kind of heard and have seen to be documented.
00:28:34.780but obviously there were still so many women who were enslaved there were still so many
00:28:40.260women who were revolutionaries who were radicals and rebelled and joined rebellions so i wanted to
00:28:47.660explore some of those histories in remember remember so florboy gillard was a sent lucian
00:28:54.040revolutionary she escaped from her plantation and joined a marine colony up in the pitons which are
00:28:59.540the big kind of mountains in st lucia or the big volcanoes in st lucia um fleur within about a year
00:29:08.180of joining this uh maroon army she kind of rose through the ranks and during the brigands war
00:29:15.100which was a war between the enslaved maroons the french versus the english um in 1791
00:29:23.780Floor kind of helped lead this army to expel the English from the island um and Floor essentially
00:29:32.720was a really big part of a whole year of freedom being won uh by the St. Lucian revolutionaries
00:29:41.720um in 1791 she was a really amazing really powerful incredible woman who
00:29:50.760i just wanted to kind of explore what might have happened if a character like her had ended up in
00:29:57.420england how might she have found other ways to rebel and like similarly with queen annie leading
00:30:03.260the maroons in jamaica i was just really inspired by some of these really strong
00:30:07.360um caribbean women when i was writing delphine and marianne's characters and yeah so we've
00:30:13.720mentioned delphine the main character of the book can you just briefly describe who marianne is
00:30:17.700in your book? Yeah, of course. So at the start of the novel, Delphine is working in a bawdy house
00:30:23.440or a brothel. She was a sex worker, but then became like a healer for the different women
00:30:29.640who were working in the bawdy house. And Marion was the owner of the bawdy house. So she was also0.98
00:30:34.680a formerly enslaved person who then married an enslaver, came over to Britain and then kind of
00:30:41.440established this brothel and establishes the Temple of Exoticies is what it's called in the
00:30:47.700the only which is the only bawdy house in britain where all of the harlots are darker than the rum
00:30:53.900that's that's marion's way she explains what the brothel is um delphine and marion have a very
00:31:00.580complex relationship they kind of stand for very different things in the novel delphine is really
00:31:06.240focused on community she's really focused on being very fiercely compassionate she's a healer
00:31:12.440Marion is very much out for herself she is such a strong incredible woman but she is the kind of
00:31:22.320person that won't risk herself won't risk her livelihood for any kind of cause and that's
00:31:29.540something I wanted to really explore in Remember Remember because obviously in so many stories
00:31:34.980about enslavement you kind of see black people as a monolith that kind of portrayed either as a
00:31:39.920victim or as a failed hero and I wanted to explore like these different narratives what would it mean
00:31:46.180to be not on the side of the impressor what would it mean to not want to take part in a revolution
00:31:53.600what would it mean to be the lead revolutionary as a woman as a queer black woman in Delphine's case
00:32:00.300and throughout the book um you also I was writing just sort of like notes and questions as I was
00:32:08.480reading the book and i just kept noticing over and over again the importance of um being able
00:32:13.840to read of reading of writing of books and letters play a really important part in this
00:32:19.300so what do you see is the importance of literacy in helping people i describe it as change the
00:32:25.560world but the importance of literacy in your book can you talk about how how that is so important
00:32:30.960to delphine and to all the characters of course everyone knows the kind of saying that knowledge
00:32:35.860is power and of course for so many years and for the majority of the period of slavery0.76
00:32:41.680it most black people were illiterate they weren't permitted to read and they if they were found to
00:32:48.840be learning to read or if they could read um it was a real danger for them they could be killed1.00
00:32:53.880for having any kind of knowledge um I've just read James by Percival Everett and there's a really
00:33:00.540powerful example in there in in the book where one of the people that helps James um has a gives
00:33:09.100him a pen and when the enslaver finds out that someone has stolen the pen they are put to death
00:33:14.460and that is I guess an example of how much it was feared um for black people to be able to read
00:33:20.760be able to write because if you can read if you can write it means that you can pass messages that
00:33:25.640can go unseen it means you can start communicating in the world in a very different way and I think
00:33:32.320that when people are denied access to resources like books and writing utensils it's really a way
00:33:39.880of ensuring that they can remain subservient it's a way of ensuring that they aren't able to grow
00:33:46.540and to kind of incite this change obviously where there is oppression there will always be
00:33:51.940resistance of course that's what happened in history and still happens today but I think for
00:33:59.960Delphine's character in particular she always knew how important reading was so when she was in St
00:34:06.600Lucia she was working with her mother who was kind of like the nurse the healer midwife on the island
00:34:12.540and she would kind of learn the names of plants she would learn the names of different things
00:34:18.580and she would learn how to write things down in inventories and stuff like that and in doing so
00:34:23.320she started to realize that she had access to so many new things she meets a character called nick
00:34:29.480in remember remember who is a lawyer and a member of parliament who's kind of inspired by granville
00:34:34.980sharp who we talked about earlier and they have this kind of dynamic where nick but loves education
00:34:41.500he loves learning to read and he loves kind of thinking about things and he loves philosophy
00:34:46.680in theory but Delphine starts to use her newfound literacy as a way to actually change things she
00:34:54.660starts learning new things getting all these new ideas and actually starting to put them into
00:34:59.840action so she turns political theory into reality and that's something I really love doing in the
00:35:07.280book because I mean I studied politics so um political philosophy has always been a really
00:35:12.760a real fond fondness it's been a real it's been a real love of mine so Delphine and her literacy
00:35:19.480journey um yeah it was a real joy to write and I really appreciated that the way you just described
00:35:25.600it is the the fact that you know somebody could oh I love political theory I love reading philosophy
00:35:30.900and she's like oh why don't we just do these things and it's like wait no we're supposed to
00:35:35.380talk about them and think about them she's like oh no this is like an action plan let's actually do
00:35:40.120it and i i love that the just a different way that people can react to reading the same thing
00:35:46.220and that kind of ties it back to what we began talking about with a gunpowder plot
00:35:49.740where delphine i forget during the book when she learns about that but she's like oh well let's just
00:35:56.000let's just try that again is basically where the book turns right she's like well they failed well
00:36:01.340but we could do it exactly she sees it as more of a roadmap as opposed to like instead of seeing it
00:36:07.320as a warning she sees it as a as an inspiration she sees it as a roadmap to try and try and do it
00:36:13.040again and i think that speaks also to something that's coming up i'm sure in the uk as well but
00:36:17.500definitely in north america um conservative people who are trying to suppress history and learning
00:36:23.920about what actually happened and i think part of it is because if people see these sort of
00:36:28.440revolutionary ideas that could inspire them to to do things now but your book really shows how
00:36:35.060just in being inspired by the gunpowder plot it progresses delphine's story in a really interesting
00:36:41.000way and how um just being inspired by history it's part of why i do this history podcast i think
00:36:47.040because i see the parallels between the past and the present and i just thought that was a really
00:36:51.900strong theme in your book as well definitely i mean with throughout every act of resistance
00:36:58.300through every kind of revolutionary movement in history it's it's all about ideas it's all about
00:37:04.780people whose voices and rights have been suppressed I guess responding in the way
00:37:10.900in the same manner I guess in the way that they have oppressed so there's there's a quote that
00:37:16.020says that the only language that an oppressor knows is the language of violence and with so
00:37:20.780many revolutions and radicals throughout history there has always been a kind of a violent element
00:37:27.960which is never I don't believe that Delphine necessarily did the right thing but I do think
00:37:36.360that Delphine's story is a real example of why it's important to listen and why it's always
00:37:44.440important to be open to change especially during times of political unrest I mean
00:37:51.480everyone everyone around the world is worried about what's going to happen in the states in
00:37:56.760the next few weeks um because there is such a big kind of culture of fear a fear of rights being
00:38:05.100eroded fear of history being changed fear of all of the things that so many millions of people have
00:38:11.420fought for over the last few centuries have done to change things and there's a real fear that all
00:38:17.700of that will be taken away and that's terrifying for so so so many people which I mean it's partly
00:38:28.740why I wrote Remember Remember so Remember Remember wouldn't exist I don't think without the murder of
00:38:36.120George Floyd so that's when I actually had the idea for the story is when I was trying to make
00:38:42.900sense of my own experience as a Black person in Britain, but also reflecting on police brutality
00:38:49.300in the States and how that kind of empirical violence has been translated across the centuries
00:38:56.760and across continents. And I, just in doing this podcast, but also in reading historical fiction,
00:39:03.000which I do a lot, I find reassurance in seeing people in past time periods who lived through
00:39:11.420periods of unprecedented times and uncertainty and revolution and the fact that they
00:39:15.840got through it i find that um that sort of thing reassuring it's we're not the first
00:39:22.160generation of people to be living in such a time of uncertainty and desperation um poverty and all
00:39:31.180these horrible things that are happening right now that's what just to me um just opening myself
00:39:36.760up to seeing how people have lived in these times and gotten through it it helps me get through
00:39:43.860these times and i found your book was reassuring in that way which is maybe funny to say because
00:39:48.180it's a book about like violent rebellion but it just reminded me about like people can persevere
00:39:53.660people have been in shitty situations um but there's still people and they still get through
00:39:58.580it and they still find love and they still you know it's so i find that sort of thing to me i
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