Brexit Britain Is Forced to Confront Its Inglorious Past
Leaving the EU was supposed to revive British glory as a global trading nation. Now the country is looking at its history through a different lens.
The boarded up statue of Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Parliament Square in central London on June 12.
Photographer: Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images
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Had he been alive, Edward Colston would surely have recognized the rage of the crowd that pulled down his statue in his home city of Bristol and dumped it into the harbor.
Born in 1636 into an age of revolution, Colston lived through three civil wars and the execution of King Charles I before he became a merchant and made his fortune from the burgeoning slave trade.