The Race for Grace

Amazing Grace is the best movie I have seen in the last five years. I cannot recollect or compare further back nor do I care: for the moment this movie, exquisite in its telling and rendering, is to be simply savoured. William Wilberforce is largely forgotten today, though there is now the predictable rash of books following this movie on his life. Why he should be forgotten worries me. There have been other reformers of course, many of whom equalled Wilberforce in zeal. None however seemed to be as effective or as eclectic. Wilberforce was not only instrumental in abolishing British involvement in the slave trade, he also introduced free education and the National Health Service, all of which he accomplished without being Prime minister. Yet it took a modern-day film-maker to give him the resurgent fame he so richly deserves. Hollywood is yet to do the same for William Blake, but one lives in hope. So, why the worry? It is simply this: our remembered history is replete with those who did bad—Hitler, Genghis Khan and his soul-brother Kublai, Nero, Rasputin et al. Yet we remember little of those who did good, unless they, such as John F. Kennedy and Ghandi, lived in the 20^th Century. All else we seem to be forgotten. Is it deliberate? Do we simply gravitate to the bad rather than the good and pay homage to the horrible rather than love the laudable? Perhaps its our nature. And, if it is nature that the bad live on in our memory while the good do not, we are condemned. George W. Bush will live on.

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