The Interest

An outstanding and gripping revelation … essential reading – Simon Sebag Montefiore
Impressively researched and engagingly written – Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times *
A magnificent book … riveting – Ian Thomson * Evening Standard *
Powerful … engrossing … Taylor’s potent book shows why slavery took root as an essential part of British national life – Martin Chilton * Independent *
Taylor can tell a story superbly and has a fine eye for detail … His argument is a potent and necessary corrective to a cosy national myth * Economist *
Michael Taylor’s well-researched The Interest is … about abolition, but it focuses on the grandees who fought against it, mostly for reasons of greed … those seeking a catalogue of the country’s old iniquities need look no further – Simon Heffer * Telegraph Books of the Year *
A thoroughly researched and potent historical account, The Interest exposes the truth behind the longstanding narrative of Britain as a leading abolitionist force and makes a powerful case for reparations – Rt Hon David Lammy MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
Scintillating … In twenty brisk, gripping chapters, Taylor charts the course from the foundation of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1823 to the final passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. Part of what makes this a compulsively readable book is his skill in cross-cutting between three groups of protagonists. On one track, we follow the abolitionist campaigners on their lengthy, uphill battle … This well-known story is reanimated by some brilliant pen-portraits … A second strand illuminates the fears and bigotries of white British West Indians … The main focus of the book, however, is on the colonists’ powerful domestic allies, the so-called West India Interest … Taylor paints a vivid picture of their outlook, organisation and superior political connections … As this timely, sobering book reminds us, British abolition cannot be celebrated as an inevitable or precocious national triumph. It was not the end, but only the beginning – Fara Dabhoiwala * Guardian *
One achievement of Taylor’s fascinating book is that, for the first time in a book about abolition, it gives equal weight to the force of pro-slavery … Taylor’s political analysis is first-rate and riveting … He argues that emancipation was neither inevitable nor altruistic; party politics in Westminster and rebellion from the West Indies played as much a role as moral outrage. Taylor’s achievement [is to] show that, thanks to the power of the Interest, being pro-slavery was seen as a respectable, even popular, position in British politics until the day of its demise. Above all, he reminds us of the role of those who have been unsung in this story - of Mary Prince, Samuel Sharpe and Quamina – Ben Wilson * The Times *
Taylor superbly brings to life all the intrigue, machinations, heavy-lifting, rigmarole and chance of the tortuous path to abolition – H Kumarasingham * Literary Review *

Michael Taylor is the author of:

• Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion
  • Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize 2024
  • Chosen as a Book of the Year by The Economist, TLS, and Waterstones
• The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery
  • Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize
  • Chosen as a Daily Telegraph Book of the Year

Born in 1988, Michael Taylor graduated with a double first in history from the University of Cambridge, where he also earned his PhD. He has since held positions as Lecturer in Modern British History at Balliol College, Oxford, and as a Visiting Fellow at the British Library’s Eccles Centre for American Studies.

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