Amazing Grace

Saw Amazing Grace on Friday night.  Not your usual kind of film but very good.  I knew vaguely about William Wilberforce, but I didn't realise he was connected with Pitt the Younger, or how the slave trade and the sugar trade were connected, or that privateers were still sailing in that era.

Wilberforce became a Christian in 1785, and made his first speech against slavery on 12 May 1789.  His first bill for abolition was put before Parliament in April 1791, and again during every session until it as passed in March 1807, nearly twenty years after his first speech.  That wasn't the end of his work, he also worked to free the existing slaves.  In August 1833, all slaves in the British Empire were freed, one month after Wilberforce died.

Definitely a film worth watching.