Grace Will Lead Me Home

About

Angeline Morrison, Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, Jon Bickley and John Palmer Present Grace Will Lead Me Home

Grace Will Lead Me Home tells the story of two men whose lives followed astonishingly similar paths, but whose experiences were astoundingly different.

Both were eleven when home-life ended. Both had sea-faring careers. Both found religion. And both became revered and influential celebrities in the campaign for the abolition of slavery.

One was a slave trader. The other was a slave

Today, one is remembered for a song. The other is almost completely forgotten

John Newton was the captain of a slave trading ship who saw the light and became a preacher. He wrote many hymns, including Amazing Grace, and later became a prominent abolitionist, mentoring William Wilberforce.

Oluadah Equiano was a kidnapped African , shipped to America and sold. He bought his freedom, came to London where he was a founder of the Sons of Africa abolition group, which brought him into the same influential circles as Newton, Wilberforce and other abolitionists.

The tensions and contradictions in their stories, and how much or little we know about them both in 2025 raises many questions.

The show is inspired by one of 2024’s most critically-acclaimed folk albums, Grace Will Lead Me Home, which featured in Mojo’s and The Morning Star’s Top Ten.

It explores the contrasting but intertwined story of both of them through their original writings, the words of their contemporaries and new and old songs and includes some aspects of history that some people might find difficult.

It is the latest chapter of Jon’s three-year Arts Council-funded project on the significance and contradictions of Amazing Grace and years of research into Black Folk Music in Britain by Angeline and Cohen.

Angeline Morrison is among the most significant voices in folk music. She has studied the history and experienced the legacy of the unexamined past of Black Folk Music in Britain. Her albums Brown Girl and The 2022 Guardian Folk Album of the Year The Sorrow Songs identified and celebrated these elements of folk previously ignored. Her latest album Ophelia puts its finger on the pulse of old English summer spookiness and dreams essential to folk music.