For nearly 170 years before the American Civil War, the Ball family owned an empire of slave plantations across South Carolina. When journalist Edward Ball set out to trace the story of his family, their slaves and their descendants, he stirred up one of the thorniest issues in contemporary America. Richard Coles talks to Ball about his personal memoir and the questions of retribution and racial division that it raises. Plus first-night news from the European premiere of David Mamet 's play The Old Neighborhood, a work telling a similar story of a man confronting the past. Producer Rebecca Stratford