The Essay: Legacies of 1619

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Legacies of 1619: Philip Quaque

Legacies of 1619

Philip Quaque

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Legacies of 1619, Philip Quaque

Caryl Phillips reflects on the life of African priest Philip Quaque.

To mark 400 years since the arrival of African slaves to America, author Caryl Phillips reflects on the life of Philip Quaque, an African priest trapped in an impossible situation.

To mark the 400 years since the arrival of African slaves to America, the author and playwright Caryl Phillips reflects on the life of one individual.

In February 1766, a twenty-five year old African man, Philip Quaque, arrived back in his native Africa, with an English wife. He had been taken to England as a teenager to be educated as a Christian missionary. In England he had been ordained into the church, and married, and now the young man was to serve in a slave fort as both a missionary to his own African people, and a Chaplain to the English troops and merchants stationed on the coast. His was an impossible situation, trapped as he was between the hostility of his own people and the disdain of the English. For nearly half a century he managed to maintain a life balanced between these two opposing groups, and he recorded the anxieties visited upon him in a remarkable series of letters that he dispatched back to his employers in England.

Producer Neil McCarthy

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

To mark the 400 years since the arrival of African slaves in America, authors reflect.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Legacies of 1619

Philip Quaque

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3