Vulgar History Podcast
Reimagining Revolutionary Black British History (with Elle Machray)
January 15, 2025
Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history podcast, my name is Ann Foster. If this is your first episode, welcome, and if it’s not, I mean, also welcome. Welcome to everybody. So, sometimes on this podcast, we talk about, we go through the life of usually a woman from history based on my research or I have a guest who has done research. And sometimes on this podcast, we have guests on who are historical fiction authors talking about their books and that is what is happening today.
We’re joined by the brilliant Elle Machray, whose debut novel, Remember, Remember, has been praised by so many things. This was an Observer Top 10 Debut Novelist of 2024, long listed for Scotland’s National Book Award for first book of the year in 2024. It’s a brilliant historical fiction novel that is set in 18th-century London, mostly. I saw Elle speak at the Edinburgh Literary Festival last summer when I was there, and listening to them talk, I was just like, all these themes…. Like, first of all, I was like, “I need to read this book,” and second of all, I was like, “I need to get Elle on Vulgar History” because everything that they were talking about, just about revolutions in history and women in history and Black people and British history is stuff that I wanted to have on the podcast for everybody to listen to because it connects so strongly with the themes of this season, which is looking at the revolutions of the 18th century all around the world.
So, Remember, Remember, as you’ll hear in this interview, it touches on the revolutions that happened in the 18th century in the Caribbean, but also what was happening in England itself. So, it is an alternate history, but very much drawn from real history and real things that happened there, especially about slavery and the beginning of the abolition of slavery, the power of, just, everyday people, poor people, Black people to foment change. And so, I was just really excited to have Elle on the podcast. This book is great.
I do want to mention… Sometimes we have authors on the show who are in the UK and their books are only available in the UK and this is one of those situations. So, Remember, Remember by Elle Machray, you can get if you’re in any of the Commonwealth nations. But then also, if you want to get it and you live in, for instance, America or in Canada, if you go to Waterstones website, which is a bookseller in the UK, they ship internationally. There are some other places that ship internationally. I’m sure you can find some other options so you can get your hands on this book, which is such a good book. And I’m just so honoured and delighted that Elle joined me for this discussion. So, enjoy this conversation with Remember, Remember author, Elle Machray.
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Ann: So, I’m so excited to be joined today by Elle Machray, author of Remember, Remember, Welcome, Elle.
Elle: Hi! I’m so happy to be here. Nice to see you, Ann.
Ann: I’m really excited to talk to you. When we were emailing talking about doing this interview, when I saw you speak at the Edinburgh Literary Festival and you were describing your book, I thought, this is so similar to what I’m talking about on my podcast this series, just about the revolutions in the 18th century and how the involvement of Black people, basically, in so many things in the Caribbean, but also in the involvement in French Revolution and everything that was happening in England. I just thought the research you did for this book seems really similar to what I want to talk about on this podcast, and then also, the book is really good, so I want people to know about it. So, I’m happy. I’m happy to have you here.
Elle: Well, thank you.
Ann: So, we’re going to talk about the book, obviously, and your research as well. But before you describe the plot of the book, bearing in mind a lot of people listening to this are not in the UK, could you explain what the Gunpowder Plot was and Guy Fawkes?
Elle: Sure. So, I guess for context we would need to go all the way back to the 16th, early 17th century. So, we are in England, we’re fresh out of the Tudor period where England had just become one of the first European countries to break away from Catholicism in favour of Protestantism, you know, Henry VIII wanting to divorce his wife. We saw throughout the Tudor period the, kind of, rapid and violent erosion of Catholic rights, so between Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. So, to put that in context, in 1558, at the start of the Tudor period, there were, like, 3 million people in England and pretty much all of them are Catholic, and by the end of Elizabeth I’s reign, there are only 40,000 Catholics left in England, which is crazy, over a period of about 60 years.
So, after the end of Elizabeth I’s reign, James I ascended to the throne, where the Catholics thought that their rights would start to be reinstated because the new king, James I, his wife was originally a Catholic. But that wasn’t to be. So, in 1604, James I gave a speech which essentially said that he detested the Catholic faith, and he ordered every single Catholic priest to leave the country. He made it illegal to practice Catholicism and so many other, kind of, dehumanizing things. This led to the radicalization of around a dozen Catholics who became the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. They were led by a really wealthy man called Robert Catesby, who was like a landed gentry kind of guy, his family had been known for joining different failed coups over the decades. But the most notable conspirator that we all kind of remember in England is Guy Fawkes.
So, Catesby, Guy Fawkes, and around 10 different conspirators came up with this plan to remove James I as king and reinstate Catholic rule in Britain. So, their plan, essentially, was to blow up Parliament on the day that everyone would meet there. So, this is the day that Parliament opens, so you get all of the clergy, you get all of the lords, you get all of the members of Parliament, and they’re all gathering there in one place one day. It took them 12 months to plan, and they got all 12 barrels of gunpowder in place. But just before their plan was due to happen, one of the conspirators got cold feet and they started feeling really guilty that one of their relatives, a lord called Francis Tresham, was going to be in Parliament that day, so he would have been responsible for the death of his own family member. So, he sent Tresham a letter saying, “Don’t come to Parliament this day.” This obviously got his spidey senses tingling. He alerted the authorities, alerted the king, who then discovered Guy Fawkes with all these 12 barrels of gunpowder.
Guy Fawkes is arrested, tortured for days and days on end, ends up confessing and giving up the names of his co-conspirators. They were each sentenced to death and then all of this kind of happened on November the 5th, 1605. And so, every November the 5th since then in England, well in the UK, we commemorate… I was going to say celebrate, but that’s not the right word. We commemorate this day, this story of this failed assassination attempt as both a warning and a reminder of the consequences of a coup or the consequences of attempting a revolution.
It’s a really stark reminder, but it’s also a story of desperation and how when peaceful acts of resistance constantly fall on deaf ears, it kind of leads to someone kind of considering how far they’ll go to change things when they feel like they have no voice and no other alternative. It’s a really interesting piece of British history. It’s kind of folkloric now, and it was one of the big inspirations behind Remember, Remember.
Ann: That’s the thing. So, your book is called Remember, Remember. Can you talk about the rhyme that that comes from?
Elle: Yeah! So, in V for Vendetta, there’s the rhyme and we also say the rhyme kind of everywhere in the UK on the 5th of November, which is “Remember, remember, the 5th of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason will ever be forgot.” And that’s kind of a theme that kind of comes throughout the novel in Remember, Remember, obviously, of course, the title, obviously, it was inspired by the Gunpowder Plot.
But it’s also called Remember, Remember because the story is as well as being inspired by the gunpowder plot, it’s more about the injustices that were inflicted upon Black people in England and across the Commonwealth during the period of slavery ever since. So, it’s really a story of remembrance of all the acts of resistance that have led to the freedoms that we have today.
Ann: And so, you start the book with… Like, I was learning facts [Elle laughs] and history from your fictional novel right away. So, you begin the book with a historical note about James Somerset. Can you explain what you learned about him and who he was?
Elle: Yes. So, James Somerset was originally born in Africa and then was transported when he was around 9 years old to the States. So, he was in the States, he was bought by an enslaver called Charles Stewart and they lived in Boston for a while before moving to London. When he was in London, James was baptized and there were these rumours going around England at the time that if you were baptized as an enslaved person, it meant that you were free because there were no Christians… It was impossible to enslave a Christian on British shores, apparently. That was the rumour.
So, James tested this theory by escaping. He ran away and when he was eventually caught, his enslaver tried to force him to go back to work. But when James refused, when James said, “No, I believe I’m a free man,” Charles then forced him aboard the ship called the Ann and Mary, where he was about to send him to the Caribbean because he had no use for an enslaved person who wasn’t going to listen to him and wasn’t going to do what he was told.
So, as James had been baptized, he then obviously got godparents. His godparents then invoked the help of the abolitionist and lawyer Granville Sharp, who took James’s case all the way to the King’s Bench, which is the 18th-century equivalent of the Supreme Court in Britain. James and Granville Sharp then took this case to the courts, and it was essentially ruled that it was illegal to enslave a person on British shores, making any Black person living in Britain, essentially, free. It was highly debated, the efficacy of this law. It was highly debated how much people really listened to it after the ruling was made. But it was the real kind of kick-starter to the abolitionist movement in Britain. And I was really inspired by James’s story in his own self-belief and his first act of resistance, which really led to the abolitionist movement really kicking off.
Ann: And I’ve been, just in my own research, and I think we’ve talked a bit on the podcast too, like, the abolitionist movement in Britain, this was decades and decades… It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that it actually, like, the abolition happened, but people were fighting for it. I was really interested to learn about him because I had never heard about this case. So, sort of just to show… I was just reading something else where people, it was a speaker was talking about how sometimes, now, people look back at history and say, “Oh, well, it was the time, people didn’t know any better.” And it was like this story of James Somerset, his godparents, like it shows, no, people back then knew that slavery was wrong.
Elle: Yeah, of course. I mean, I think that’s such an interesting point as well. So, I guess for context, I know we’re going to talk about this a little bit next, but in Britain at that time, there were probably between 20,000 to 50,000 Black people living in Britain at the time. So, they were becoming more visible, and they were becoming more involved in daily life. And it wasn’t just big-name abolitionists like Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce, who were kind of spearheading the end of slavery. It was normal, everyday people who were saying, “Actually, no, this is wrong. These people are just, they’re fellow human beings and it’s completely wrong.”
So, I guess an example of that is along with, like, the Quakers taking a big role in the abolitionist movement, so many women got involved in the abolitionist movement too. In the late 18th century, so many women started to use their own power to, kind of, make the slave trade less profitable. So, for example, they went, they started enforcing a boycott of sugar and cotton and other slave-traded goods. The end of the slave trade really was a giant movement by so many different people; Black abolitionists, lawyers, women. It was, yeah, it was just normal, everyday people who were really starting to change things in Britain.
Ann: I think that’s such an important thing to bear in mind that it was, like, the normal, everyday people. It wasn’t just a wealthy lord decided that he was going to do this. It was the people, like, from the ground up. And that’s a lot of what we see in your book too, which is an alternate history—it pivots on a certain point and we’ll talk about that in a bit—but the spirit and the vibe of your book is so similar to the real revolutionaries who were fighting at that time about various things.
Actually, that brings me to my next question. So, your book is set around mostly in the year 1770 in London. What can you tell us about what life was like for Black people in that time and place?
Elle: So, I guess 1770 London, it was around the time when people were really starting to pay attention to the idea of revolution. It was when normal, everyday people were starting to think about their own rights and how things could be changing. So, I guess for context in the late 18th century, so around 1770, the slave trade was about to reach its absolute peak and the economy from the plantations were bringing so much wealth into London and were really, kind of, the lifeblood of British wealth at that time.
As the kind of people who were owning plantations abroad were starting to return home, many of them started to bring their enslaved people back with them. So, that’s kind of how we saw, like, a much larger number of Black people start, I guess, just appearing on the streets of London. The majority of them were enslaved people but during the late 17th century, we saw a big increase in the number of people who were Black people who were servants, people getting involved in apprenticeships, and people just doing normal, everyday things in London. It was the time when Black people started becoming more visible in Britain, it was a time when people started considering another way of Black people being involved in British society and British culture.
Ann: And I just wanted to mention, I remember you brought this up at the talk you gave last summer, that there’s a misconception today that some people assume that Black people didn’t come to Britain until the 1950s with the Windrush generation. But in fact, like what you’re talking about, there was this influx of Black people coming during the slave trade era but there’s also, going all the way back to the Romans, basically. Black people in Britain is not a new thing. I’m not from there, so I didn’t know that this was a common misconception, but it is, that some people think there just weren’t Black people there until the 20th century.
Elle: Yeah, of course. When you think about empire at all, it means ships coming in and out, people travelling across the world, going from port to port and changing places. So, of course, that means that people settle in new places, people build lives in other places. So, there’s always been a visible Black presence in Britain. And exactly as you said, there’s evidence of a Black battalion at Hadrian’s Wall, which is along the border between Scotland and England. So, that’s the Roman era. It’s a very big misconception. There are lots of historians now who are starting to change that, and it’s starting to become more known that we have always been here. But it’s a slow process that is very slowly starting to change.
Ann: Mm-hm. So, moving into the characters of Remember, Remember, who are all fictional characters…? The main characters are all fictional characters, right?
Elle: Yes, the main characters are all fictional characters. I think the only exception, I don’t think he’s a main character, but Mansfield, who was the judge in Vincent’s case, was also the real judge who ruled on the James Somerset case. But yeah, pretty much everyone else is just inspired by historical figures from the period.
Ann: Yeah, so exactly. I could tell just from reading the books, from my own research, and just from the way that you wrote it, I’m like, this is clearly, you did so much research on this. For instance, so the character of Vincent… The main character of the book is Delphine, Vincent is her brother. He is a Black man who is a successful boxer, and I thought, oh yeah! Because I visited the National Portrait Gallery when I was in London and there was a big, it was sort of like, I don’t know, it was almost like a paper mâché collage that had belonged to Lord Byron and it was just of famous Black boxers of that time. So, I was familiar with the fact that there were black people who were boxers at that time because I’d seen this kind of historical document. So, what did you learn about real-life boxing celebrities of this era?
Elle: So, interestingly, there were a few. So, Vincent’s character, I guess, is more specifically inspired by the real-life Black boxer who was called Bill Richmond. Bill Richmond was also the inspiration behind William Wondrich in Bridgerton.
Ann: I was going to say, yeah, Bridgerton as well, people may be familiar with boxing from that.
Elle: Of course, of course. Yeah, so Vincent’s character is inspired heavily by Bill Richmond, who was a successful Black boxer in Britain. Bill Richmond is also the inspiration behind William Wondrich from Bridgerton. And boxing, I suppose, for Black Britons was really a way to ingratiate themselves into British life, it was a way of becoming more visible. It was also a way of earning money outside of the household and starting to, kind of, build networks, build connections that they could then leverage to get their freedom.
So, in the case of Vincent, Vincent is Delphine’s brother in Remember, Remember. The novel opens with him trying to win his freedom. He’s been given this task of winning his weight in gold and therefore he will be free. Things don’t necessarily go to plan for him in the novel and that’s how we kind of get the James Somerset link and we go on this journey to see Vincent try and win his freedom within the realms of the British legal system and go on to change things. So, as much as boxing was a way for Black men in Britain at the time to earn money, it wasn’t so popular, like, it’s not like you’re going to have a whole team of Black boxers. It was still a very exceptional thing to do and a very exceptional thing to have been part of. I chose boxing for Vincent as a very visible thing and also as a way of kind of showing Black culture in Britain at the time and how Black culture in Britain was mostly there for the enjoyment of the wealthy white slave owners at the time.
I think with Vincent’s story, I wanted to explore the boxing angle, but I also wanted… His character is very much influenced by so many other influential black Britons at the time. So, as well as James Somerset, as well as Bill Richmond, there’s also Charles Sancho, who was a really educated Black man who became the very first man to vote in a British election. So, Vincent is really an amalgamation of so many different people and encompasses so much of Black resilience in the time.
Ann: It also reminds me, just how you described the boxing and the fact that the audience was primarily white people watching this happen, but he was a celebrity of the time, the real-life boxer, was a celebrity of the time as well. That just reminds me a bit of these days, how there’s so much… Black people, I’m more familiar with in America or in Canada, but performers or artists, they set the tone for the culture and fashion and slang and music and everything. Where it’s like, society loves Black culture, and yet Black people are still so marginalized in so many places. It just seems like a historical precedent for that sort of thing where it’s like, “This is fine for entertainment, but we’re still going to enslave you.” That sort of vibe.
Elle: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Any means of profiting off Black innovation, I suppose, it’s a real theme. Real theme throughout the last five centuries, I’d say.
Ann: Yeah, not so different now.
So, the main character of your book… Vincent is the brother and that was my first question about the book because that’s how the book starts. But Delphine is the main character and she and Vincent are both originally from Saint Lucia. And why did you choose that? Well, can you explain where Saint Lucia is? But also, why did you choose that as their background?
Elle: Saint Lucia is a very small island, it’s been inhabited for thousands of years. And around the early 17th century, so actually in 1605 (the same year as the Gunpowder Plot) is when the first English ship arrived on Saint Lucia. So, the first English ship arrived, but they were only kind of settling on Saint Lucia for less than a year because many of them died either due to illness or due to altercations with the native Caribs. Over the next 200 years or so, there was an ongoing clash between the Caribs, the French, and the British for control of the island. So, England, for the majority of that time, had control of Saint Lucia where they established lots of sugar plantations and other kinds of enslaved goods and were starting to export that. So, England really was the main colonizer of Saint Lucia and was the main colonizer of Saint Lucia all the way up until the 20th century. So, eventually, in 1979, on the 22nd of February, Saint Lucia was granted its independence from England or from Britain. It’s a very long, very long history.
Ann: I really appreciated that that was… Well, just knowing that you have this family link to Saint Lucia, that’s part of why you chose it but also, I’ve just been learning for the first time more about the history of the Caribbean, what things were like before the colonizers came, how many revolutions were fought there. And just, there are so many islands and each one has its own story. So, I appreciated through this book, like learning a bit more about Saint Lucia specifically.
So, I mean, speaking of that, you mentioned slave rebellions in other places, like in Jamaica. So, in the book, you do mention either directly or just sort of indirectly about some other revolutionaries, especially women of this era, like Queen Nanny from Jamaica and Flore Bois Gaillard from Saint Lucia. And so, how did those characters inspire the female characters in your book?
Elle: Well, I suppose as much as I’ve spoken about really influential Black Britons or Black male revolutionaries, Black male narratives are the predominant slave narratives and slave stories that we’ve kind of heard and have seen to be documented. But obviously, there were still so many women who were enslaved, there were still so many women who were revolutionaries, who were radicals and joined rebellions. So, I wanted to explore some of those histories in Remember, Remember.
Flore Bois-Gaillard was a Saint Lucian revolutionary. She escaped from her plantation and joined a maroon colony up in the Pitons, which are the big mountains in Saint Lucia, or the big volcanoes in Saint Lucia. Flore, within about a year of joining this maroon army, she kind of rose through the ranks and during the Brigand’s War, which was a war between the enslaved maroons, the French versus the English in 1791, Flore kind of helped lead this army to expel the English from the island. And Flore, essentially, was a really big part of a whole year of freedom being won by the Saint Lucian revolutionaries in 1791. She was a really amazing, really powerful, incredible woman who I just wanted to, kind of, explore what might have happened if a character like her had ended up in England. How might she have found other ways to rebel? And similarly, with Queen Nanny leading the maroons in Jamaica, I was just really inspired by some of these really strong Caribbean women when I was writing Delphine and Marion’s characters.
Ann: So, we’ve mentioned Delphine, the main character of the book. Can you just briefly describe who Marion is in your book?
Elle: Yeah, of course. So, at the start of the novel, Delphine is working in a bawdy house or a brothel. She was a sex worker but then became, like, a healer for the different women who were working in the bawdy house and Marion was the owner of the bawdy house. So, she was also a formerly enslaved person who then married an enslaver, came over to Britain and then kind of established this brothel and establishes the Temple of Exoticies is what it’s called in the novel, which is “the only bawdy house in Britain where all of the harlots are darker than the rum.” That’s Marion’s way she explains what the brothel is.
Delphine and Marion have a very complex relationship. They kind of stand for very different things in the novel. Delphine is really focused on community, she’s really focused on being very fiercely compassionate, she’s a healer. Marion is very much out for herself; she is such a strong, incredible woman, but she is the kind of person that won’t risk herself, won’t risk her livelihood for any kind of cause.
That’s something I’ve wanted to really explore in Remember, Remember, because obviously in so many stories about enslavement, you kind of see Black people as a monolith. They’re kind of portrayed either as a victim or as a failed hero. And I wanted to explore these different narratives. What would it mean to be not on the side of the oppressor? What would it mean to not want to take part in a revolution? What would it mean to be the lead revolutionary as a woman, as a queer Black woman, in Delphine’s case?
Ann: And throughout the book, you also… I was writing notes and questions as I was reading the book and I just kept noticing over and over again the importance of being able to read, of reading, of writing, books and letters play a really important part in this. So, what do you see is the importance of literacy in helping people? I describe it as “changed the world.” But the importance of literacy in your book. Can you talk about how that is so important to Delphine and to all the characters?
Elle: Of course, everyone knows the kind of saying that knowledge is power. And of course, for so many years, and for the majority of the period of slavery, most Black people were illiterate, they weren’t permitted to read and if they were found to be learning to read or if they could read, it was a real danger for them. They could be killed for having any kind of knowledge. I’ve just read James by Percival Everett and there’s a really powerful example in the book where one of the people that helps James gives him a pen, and when the enslaver finds out that someone has stolen the pen, they are put to death.
That is, I guess, an example of how much it was feared for Black people to be able to read, to be able to write. Because if you can read, if you can write, it means that you can pass messages that can go unseen; it means you can start communicating in the world in a very different way. I think that when people are denied access to resources like books and writing utensils, it’s really a way of ensuring that they can remain subservient, it’s a way of ensuring that they aren’t able to grow and to, kind of, incite this change. Obviously, where there is oppression, there will always be resistance. Of course, that’s what happened in history and still happens today.
But I think for Delphine’s character in particular, she always knew how important reading was. So, when she was in Saint Lucia, she was working with her mother, who was kind of like the nurse, the healer, midwife on the island and she would kind of learn the names of plants, she would learn the names of different things, and she would learn how to write things down in inventories and stuff like that. In doing so, she started to realize that she had access to so many new things. She meets a character called Nick in Remember, Remember, who is a lawyer and a member of parliament who’s kind of inspired by Granville Sharp, who we talked about earlier. They have this kind of dynamic where Nick loves education, he loves learning to read, and he loves kind of thinking about things, and he loves philosophy… in theory. But Delphine starts to use her little newfound literacy as a way to actually change things. She starts learning new things, getting all these new ideas, and actually starting to put them into action. So, she turns political theory into reality. That’s something I really love doing in the book because I mean, I studied politics so political philosophy has always been a really, a real fondness, it’s been a real love of mine. So, Delphine and her literacy journey, yeah, that was a real joy to write.
Ann: And I really appreciated that. The way you just described it is… The fact that, you know, somebody could, “Oh, I love political theory. I love reading philosophy.” And she’s like, “Oh, why don’t we just do these things?” And it’s like, “Wait, no, we’re supposed to just talk about them and think about them.” She’s like, “Oh no, this is like an action plan. Let’s actually do it.” I love just the different way that people can react to reading the same thing and that kind of ties it back to what we began talking about with the Gunpowder Plot where Delphine… I forget during the book when she learns about that, but she’s like, “Oh! Well, let’s just try that again,” is basically where the book turns. She’s like, “Well, they failed, but we could do it.”
Elle: Exactly. She sees it as more of a roadmap as opposed to, like… Instead of seeing it as a warning, she sees it as an inspiration. She sees it as a roadmap to try and do it again.
Ann: And I think that speaks also to something that’s coming up, I’m sure in the UK as well, but definitely in North America, conservative people who are trying to suppress history and learning about what actually happened. I think part of it is because if people see these, sort of, revolutionary ideas that could inspire them to do things now.
But your book really shows how just in being inspired by the Gunpowder Plot, it progresses Delphine’s story in a really interesting way, and how… Just being inspired by history. It’s part of why I do this history podcast, I think, because I see the parallels between the past and the present. And I just thought that was a really strong theme in your book as well.
Elle: Definitely. I mean, throughout every act of resistance, through every kind of revolutionary movement in history, it’s all about ideas. It’s all about people whose voices and rights have been suppressed, I guess, responding in the way, in the same manner, I guess, in the way that they have been oppressed. So, there’s a quote that says that, “The only language that an oppressor knows is the language of violence,” and with so many revolutions and radicals throughout history, there has always been kind of a violent element, which is never… I don’t believe that Delphine necessarily did the right thing, but I do think that Delphine’s story is a real example of why it’s important to listen and why it’s always important to be open to change, especially during times of political unrest.
I mean, everyone, everyone around the world is worried about what’s going to happen in the States in the next few weeks, because there is such a big culture of fear, a fear of rights being eroded, fear of history being changed, fear of all of the things that so many millions of people have fought for over the last few centuries have done to change things. There’s a real fear that all of that will be taken away and that’s terrifying for so, so, so many people. I mean, it’s partly why I wrote Remember, Remember. So, Remember, Remember wouldn’t exist, I don’t think, without the murder of George Floyd. That’s when I actually had the idea for the story, is when I was trying to make sense of my own experience as a Black person in Britain but also reflecting on police brutality in the States and how that kind of empirical violence has been translated across the centuries and across continents.
Ann: Just in doing this podcast but also in reading historical fiction (which I do a lot), I find reassurance in seeing people in past time periods who lived through periods of unprecedented times and uncertainty and revolution, and the fact that they got through it. I find that sort of thing reassuring. We’re not the first generation of people to be living in such a time of uncertainty and desperation, poverty, and all these horrible things that are happening right now. Just, to me, opening myself up to seeing how people have lived in these times and gotten through it, it helps me get through these times. I found your book was reassuring in that way, which is maybe funny to say, because it’s a book about, like, violent rebellion. But it just reminded me about, like, people can persevere. People have been in shitty situations, but they’re still people and they still get through it, and they still find love and they still, you know… So, I find that sort of thing, to me, I find that just reassuring to remind myself that people have always just been people.
Elle: Yeah, of course. I mean, I’m so glad you said that because the whole… It is a violent story, but the violence isn’t the main point of the story. The main thing I wanted someone to feel when they were reading Remember, Remember, when they got to the end was this feeling of hope that things can change, that no matter how bleak something seems, there will always be people who stand up for the right side of history. There will always be people that will be willing to make a difference.
There’s a quote in the book and it’s my favourite line where Delphine thinks… The quote is, “Her very skin is a rebellion, her breaths evidence of resistance, her thoughts a living reminder of ancestral hope.” And it essentially just means— I wrote that it’s my favourite line in the book because I really feel it as a Black woman. It’s something I really feel is important because I wouldn’t be sat here talking to you, I wouldn’t be sat here having written a story about a Black woman, essentially trying to blow up a load of white men, without all the acts of resistance that have led to this moment. If every other person had kind of sat in fear and lived in fear, and not tried to change things, then nothing would have changed. I think Delphine’s story is so important and so powerful because it is a reminder to never lose hope.
Ann: That’s such a powerful, it’s such a powerful line. That did jump out to me as well in the book. I think I could tell how important that line was to you.
Elle, thank you so much for joining me to talk about all of this. I mean, again, I’m so grateful to be able to talk to you and also just everything you said, it really helps build up sort of this thesis of this podcast series I’m working on, which is really just looking at… I think often when revolutions are looked at or discussed, it’s in the context of who were the, sort of, often, wealthy white men who paved the way. Where it’s like, yeah, they were there, and they were an important part of it but also, the people of colour, and the poor people, and the marginalized people, and the enslaved people, that’s such an important part of all the revolutions and their voices are often not talked about. So, this really helps just to fill in those gaps. So, thank you.
Elle: Thank you. Yeah, I’ve had a really nice time talking to you. It’s been great kind of delving more into the history behind the book because I don’t get to talk about it so often. So, thank you so much for inviting me.
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So again, now that everyone is, I’m sure, like when I first heard Elle speaking at the Edinburgh Literary Festival, dying to read this book. If you’re in any Commonwealth nation, you can purchase it. If you’re in America or in Canada (which is technically a Commonwealth nation, but North America is different for book publishing) you can go to sites such as Waterstones, which is a bookstore in the UK, and they ship internationally. And there’s other stores that ship internationally as well. So, you can get your hands on this brilliant book, which I really, really, really strongly recommend. So, I hope people who want to read it are able to get their hands on it.
Otherwise, so Vulgar History, what’s going on? Actually, I do have something new to tell you all about me and this podcast. And that is at the end of every episode, I’m always like, “Follow me here, follow me here. Here’s all the stuff you can do.” And it’s like, I don’t mean… I hope you don’t feel that I’m saying like, “Go to these six different social media sites and follow me and all of them.” It’s more just like, I’m on all the social media sites so if you’re on one, you can find me there. But I was like, it would be good to have sort of, one-stop shopping for people just to get all the updates, especially in these days of billionaire social media network owners revealing how rotted they truly are.
What I have done is I’ve started a new mailing list. So, what this is, is once a month, I’m going to send out, like, an email newsletter that’ll just be, sort of like, “Here’s the highlights.” Here’s what we’re talking about on the podcast, here’s the latest updates about my book that I’m writing, Rebel of the Regency, the biography of Caroline of Brunswick. Also, information about other exciting things that are actually coming up like live events; I’m coming to the US, stay tuned for more details about that. But also in my newsletter, I’m going to have book recommendations, maybe podcasts or movie recommendations, TV shows. It’ll just be… If you want to keep up with what I’m doing without having to constantly monitor 12 different social media things, just sign up for the newsletter. And the way that you do it is you go to VulgarHistory.com/News, the link is down in the show notes as well. You can just click it there. Just give me your email address and I’ll put you on the list. And again, I’m not going to be spamming you. I’m going to send, I think my plan is, one newsletter per month that’s just kind of an overall summary of what’s been going on, what’s the news you need to know. That is what I would recommend for people who just want to make sure you don’t miss any important announcements.
And then also, if you want to get a bit more content from me, I have a Patreon, which you can join as a paid person, but also as a free person. So, the way the Patreon works is that I post, for the free members of the Patreon, I’ve been posting updates about my books, like, casual, short updates about how the writing is going and stuff. And then also just, like, interesting links and stuff. Again, it’s just kind of like, I’m on all the social media, but just algorithms and stuff, like, people who want to know what I’m up to don’t always see it if the algorithm doesn’t like me that day. So, if you just want to see what I’m talking about in a more often… Like, the newsletter is once a month; Patreon I post, like, probably a couple of times a week. And so, if you join the Patreon for free, which you can do, you’ll get those updates. You go to Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, and you can just sign up for free membership.
If you want to sign up for a paid membership, you get a little bit more. So, if you pay at least $1 a month or more, then you get ad-free access to all episodes of Vulgar History, including past episodes. So, if you want to do, like, a binge, catch up on some stuff. I would say you might want to re-listen to the episode from a few years ago I interviewed actor and author, Paterson Joseph about Charles Ignatius Sancho, which connects pretty directly to what Elle was talking about Black British history. That’d be a good one to re-listen to. Anyway, so on the Patreon paid tier for $1 or more a month, you get early, ad-free access to all episodes of Vulgar History.
And then if you want to get a little bit more, if you pay $5 or more a month, then you get the bonus episodes on there as well, which is things like the Vulgarpiece Theatre, where I talk about costume dramas with Allison Epstein and Lana Wood Johnson. We haven’t recorded a new one of those for a while, we’re all, honestly, incredibly busy people, but you can listen to all the past episodes and there will be future episodes. I also do episodes called So This Asshole, where I talk about awful men from history, and there’s also The Aftershow where sometimes I talk about… Well, sometimes I have a guest on and we get too off track so I moved that into The Aftershow so you can hear that there. Most recently, Allison Epstein joined me on The Aftershow to talk about a movie called Conclave, which we were both really, really, really excited about.
Also, additionally, if you want to connect with other members of the Tits Out Brigade, (which is the name of the listeners of this podcast, if you didn’t know) people who are on the Patreon at $5 a month or more level get access to our Discord, which is just like a big group chat. We’re having a nice time there. We’re recommending books, people who live in countries with stressful political situations can vent about what’s going on there and support each other, we’re also really excitedly talking about The Traitors reality show, sharing pictures of our pets. It’s a nice time. Anyways, again, if you want to join that group chat on Discord, you join the Patreon for $5 a month and you get a link to join the Discord so you can chat on there as well.
Also, as always, we have our gorgeous brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, which is a small, woman-owned business. I love that we’re partnered with them, everything about it. We just vibe so well. The owner, Torie, and I, we’re basically friends now. That happened because I slid into her DMs being like, “Hi, do you want to work together?” Anyway, so what Torie does in her business is she makes beautiful pieces of jewelry inspired by women from history and also just ancient cultures, that’s what’s called Common Era because that is what… Before Common Era is what we call, what used to be called BC is now called BCE. Common Era is the era that we’re living in now. Anyway, so she has a whole collection that’s called “Difficult Women,” which is inspired by women whose reputations… You know what? Like, with the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni of it all, just a reminder that when women get a reputation for being difficult, it’s usually because they’re standing up for themselves against some asshole men. It has been such throughout history. That’s why some of the difficult women in the collection are people like Boudica, Cleopatra, Agrippina. Agrippina did murder some people, but also, you know what? They deserved it. Anne Boleyn is also one of the difficult women in the collection. Common Era also has beautiful pieces featuring women from mythology like Medusa and Aphrodite. And also, just pieces inspired by the jewelry of the BCE period so not with a specific woman profile face on it, but inspired by jewelry that’s been found by archaeologists and stuff. Anyway, their pieces are available in solid gold as well as in more affordable gold vermeil. And you, yes you Vulgar History listeners, can always get 15% off your order from Common Era by going to CommonEra.com/Vulgar or use code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout.
And if you want to represent the Tits Out Brigade itself, Vulgar History, we have merch as well. So, first of all, if you’re in the US, you can go to VulgarHistory.com/Store and that takes you to our TeePublic store. Or if you’re outside the US, your shipping is better if you go to VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. And I’ll see, this is why I was like, if you just want one-stop shopping, just VulgarHistory.com/News, sign up for the newsletter. You won’t have to remember all these things that I always say at the end of every episode.
But also, I am on social media, I’m on Instagram, I’m on Threads, I’m on Bluesky. I also have a Substack, which is where I post my essays about women from history. I started posting some stuff there as well about Caroline of Brunswick, sort of like deleted scenes that don’t fit in the book, but I did the writing about them and so I want to let you know that stuff. Anyway, if you want to follow me in Substack, you go to VulgarHistory.Substack.com. And yeah, if you want to get in touch with me as a person, go to VulgarHistory.com, there’s a little “Contact me” link there as well.
Next week, we’re going to be having another author interview. And we’re going to be talking… It’s a nonfiction book author and it’s got… You know, I only invite people on the podcast and I’ve read their book and I really love it and this is another instance of that. We’re going to be talking about medical history; women’s history in the context of medical history. And I think you’re really going to enjoy that. That’s what’s happening next week on vulgar history. But until then, everyone, keep your pants on, keep your tits out and talk to you again soon.
Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.
References:
Order a copy of Elle’s book Remember, Remember.
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Sign up for the Vulgar History mailing list!
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Get 15% off all the gorgeous jewellery and accessories at common.era.com/vulgar or go to commonera.com and use code VULGAR at checkout
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Get Vulgar History merch at vulgarhistory.com/store (best for US shipping) and vulgarhistory.redbubble.com (better for international shipping)
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Support Vulgar History on Patreon
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