Source: Journal #80 - Achille Mbembe - Difference and Self-Determination "According to the Met Museum: "Frederic Feldtrappe produced this textile in the early nineteenth century during a moment of intense debate in France over the viability and morality of the slave trade. Of the four narrative scenes, two reference earlier paintings by English artist George Moreland and contrast the brutality of European slave traders with the kindness of Africans who minister to a shipwreck

On Tuesday of this week I was at an event in Cambridge with a host of other crime writers, and writers of historical fiction. A young man in a flat cap approached and, having introduced himself as an aspiring writer of historical fiction, asked ‘How much research do you do?’ I gave him a bright smile and my usual useless, but utterly true answer. ‘You know. Way too much, and never enough.’ In a sense, and despite the title of this post, no research is lost. It all informs you

Being a Londoner feels a bit tough this month. I’ve worked in Borough Market and lots of my friends still do, as does my husband from time to time. Now the horror of that attack has been subsumed by the nightmare of Grenfell Tower and as I write this, news is coming through of an attack on the Finsbury Park mosque. I’m not going to draw any historical analogies or share any platitudes about how London will carry on, but I will say this: I believe that the divide between rich