Spring...

...seems a very long way away, and I'm sorta a little not feeling up to much blogging, so I thought I'd repeat this from last year, in the hope it might bring some small amount of cheer in what seems an interminable winter:

http://nemesisrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/02/snowdrops-and-earl-grey.html

The picture above is of Earl Grey, of Reform Act fame, whose monument stands in the centre of Newcastle,  who is buried at Howick Hall, Northumberland, and the blog is partly about him (and tea, and snowdrops, and a rather pleasing historic building...)

And I'd like to add this link, to an English Heritage page, which not only has further details of the part played by Grey in the abolition of slavery, but tells a little of the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, whose family I am descended from I understand.

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.17489

I'm pleased to discover that there is a plaque to his memory on a pub in Bristol, as well as a memorial in Westminster Abbey.

http://www.englandspastforeveryone.org.uk/Counties/Bristol/Projects/SlaveryTrail/Items/SevenStarsPub

http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/thomas-clarkson


Nem