This fascinating two-parter (17 & 24 June) began with our genial host, Professor Robert Beckford (inset), en route by taxi to Codrington College, Barbados.

Heart and Soul: The Church’s Slave Plantation
BBC world service

This fascinating two-parter (17 & 24 June) began with our genial host, Professor Robert Beckford (inset), en route by taxi to Codrington College, Barbados. What he alighted on at the seminary’s 700-acre estate, all grey stone and well trimmed lawns, reminded him of nothing so much as an Oxford quadrangle. Not surprising, as this hotbed of Barbadian Anglicanism had been founded by Sir Christopher Codrington (1668-1710), scholar, bibliophile and magnate of a vast slave plantation, who gave his name to the spectacular library at All Souls.

As Dr Michael Clarke, the college principal, readily conceded, this was a place of ghosts: “We are standing on some serious history.” And yet three centuries after his death, Codrington seemed an odd figure, keen that the human chattels he owned should cut his cane and manufacture his rum, but equally anxious to educate them and convert them to Christianity. “Not your typical plantation owner,” remarked Dr Tara Innes from the University of the West Indies, whose views Beckford later sought.

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