Review

Culture

Grace

Music

Race

15 November 2024

5 min read

Revisiting Amazing Grace inspires new songs

Today’s musicians capture both the barbaric and the beautiful.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

three folk musicians face the camera across a meadow

Angeline, Cohen & Jon.

John Newton’s Amazing Grace was originally written to accompany his sermon for New Year’s Day 1773 and has become the most recorded and most sung hymn in the world. Last year was the 250th anniversary of the hymn’s creation while next year is the 300th anniversary of Newton’s birth.

The former slave trader who became a Church of England minister and abolitionist, preached his sermon on the theme of God’s mercy as outlined in a biblical passage from the first book of Chronicles. There, King David prays ‘Who am I Lord and what is my family that you have brought me thus far?’ Newton found parallels with his own life, having been saved from sinfulness and a storm at sea.

Among the many events and projects marking the two anniversaries, a folk album entitled Grace Will Lead Me Home may well be one of the most interesting. That is because, while it celebrates the hymn and its legacy, this album also explores “the distance between the world’s most beloved hymn and a most vile and shameful period in history, the trans-Atlantic slave trade”.

As captain of a slave ship when he became a Christian, Newton continued shipping Africans across the Atlantic. Later, he became Curate in Charge at St Peter and St Paul’s Church in Olney, where he befriended William Cowper and wrote the words to many hymns, including ‘Amazing Grace’. Later still, he lent his voice to the abolitionist cause. Despite these tensions in Newton’s life-story, the love that people have for ‘Amazing Grace’, including those who are descended from the slaves that Newton shipped across the Atlantic, became very apparent in a series of interviews conducted as part of the project before the songs forming the album were written and selected.

‘I’m going to hear John Newton preach’ is a key track on the album in which Jon Bickley describes Newton’s transformation from “foul-mouthed drunken sailor” to the captain able to “talk about how Grace can set you free”. In between, however, Bickley notes that the slaves disembark “leaving a trail of blood across the quay” while “the Captain’s in his cabin” writing about grace. Bickley’s songs on the album culminate in a powerful plea for reparations for slavery entitled ‘Sorry’. He writes:

“300 years after the birth of John Newton the road to redemption for those nations who profited from the slave trade looks long and difficult but surely it starts by saying Sorry.”

Bickley collaborated on the album with two musicians who have also played on other recent folk albums exploring the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy. Both Angeline Morrison and Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne played on a project by Reg Meuross entitled Stolen From God, while Morrison had also released The Sorrow Songs, which featured Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, to considerable acclaim. Both artists brought the weight of their study as well as their considerable artistic talents to the Grace Will Lead Me Home project.

Braithwaite-Kilcoyne brought the profound and arresting ‘Press Gang Song’ to the album. This is a resume of what it takes to become a slave trader from a readiness to “sail the fierce sea” to the willingness to “abuse your fellow man lead him shackled in chains”, “brutalise and violate, disregard their cries of pain”, “cast them overboard to a watery grace”, “for when that you do you shall master your trade”. This was the journey taken by Newton in becoming a slave trader.

Morrison, whose ‘Grace will lead me home’ is based on the Christian hope of resurrection, also writes from that perspective in ‘The Hand of Fanny Johnson’ from The Sorrow Songs. There, having noted the universality of death which “comes for the rich and the lowly”, she sings:

“My dear mother said that a funeral is holy,
The sanctified earth receiving the body,
And in the hereafter that’s when we will all be
Remade, entire and whole.”

Stolen from God, while clearly noting and condemning the way in which European Christians viewed the degradation inflicted on others as their God-given route to wealth, also makes some words of Frederick Douglass, a former slave turned abolitionist, writer and orator, central to the song cycle:

“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference… so wide that to receive the one as good, pure and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked… I love the pure, peaceable and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”

The song ‘Stolen from God’ makes this contrast its central theme:

“God made these hands to hold and caress
He made these hands to worship and bless
He made these hands to hold my own child
God made these hands to be mild”

Yet, those involved in the slave trade:

“You made these hands to blister and bleed
To slave for the white man and bend to his greed
To cut coffee for gentlemen cane for their wives
At the cost of my family’s lives”

As a result, your legacy is “written in blood, everything stolen from God”.

This contradiction in the Christianity that underpinned the transatlantic slave trade is central to the story of Amazing Grace and its legacy (see Bickley’s ‘The choir still sings Amazing Grace’). Newton did come to see the error of his ways and lend his voice to the abolitionist cause in support of those like William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and Olaudah Equiano. Meuross effectively captures the beginning of this change in a song called ‘Bridgewater’ about an early petition against slavery:

“Reverend Chubb Mr Tucket Mr White
Call on every Christian soul to join the fight
To stand up as a nation ‘gainst this wicked violation
Though it might be bad for trade you know it’s right…
O brother oh brother oh brother
First the tide must turn before the flood”

The Sorrow Songs, Stolen From God and Grace Will Lead Me Home are three deeply moving and challenging albums, with Morrison and Braithwaite-Kilcoyne as the exceptional musicians linking all three, that tackle the history of the transatlantic slave trade, unearthing both incredible tales and uncomfortable truths. The Church is among the institutions that need most to hear and receive the truths and tales these albums share.

Angeline Morrison – The Sorrow Songs (Topic Records 2022)

Reg Meuross – Stolen From God (Hatsongs Records 2023)

Angeline, Cohen & Jon – Grace Will Lead Me Home (Invisible Folk 2024)

Review

Culture

Film & TV

Friendship

31 July 2025

5 min read

I’m going to cling on to The Ballad of Wallis Island

This comedy about fans and idols touches the heart too

Steve Dew-Jones

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

A couple site on a sofa, one holds a guitar

Cary Mulligan and Tom Basden.

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine told me I needed to see The Ballad of Wallis Island.

He said I’d like it. In fact, my friend went so far as to say he thought it would be one of my favourite ever films.

And now, having gone to see the new comedy-drama, I can confirm that he was right.

But just what was it about this film - quite short by modern standards at 1 hour 40 - that marked it out as one I would so obviously enjoy?

I was considering this as I sat through it, and as my guffaws eventually gave way to tears, I had my answer.

For when it comes to films - or anything in life, really - it’s those with deeper meaning that most enthrall me.

And James Griffiths’ new film certainly has this in spades - it’s a “ballad”, after all - as well as a good dose of humour, epitomised by the inimitable Tim Key, whom some of you may know from the 2022 sitcom Witchfinder.

As someone who grew up on the painfully awkward comedy of Ricky Gervais’ The Office, Key’s character, Charles, the bumbling super-fan of a folk duo, is a perfect blend of the endearing and the ridiculous.

From the moment “the great Herb McGwyer” (played by Tom Basden) arrives on Wallis Island to be met by a host who swiftly sends him head over heels into the sea, the stage is set for the relationship that will dominate the narrative.

Devotee and artist, wealthy loner and lonely superstar provide the perfect juxtaposition, whose success is no doubt aided by the fact that both lead actors were also co-writers.

One suspects the film’s success may also have something to do with the time it spent in development, having first been produced nearly two decades ago as a BAFTA-nominated comedy short, titled The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island.

But having now watched both 2025 film and 2007 short, which is available to watch online, the feature-length version is, to my mind, by far the better of the two.

And while some of the jokes from the original remain, such as the manner of Herb’s comical arrival and eventual departure - though I won’t spoil the latter for you - there are some notable improvements.

Chief among them, in my eyes, are the three female characters incorporated into the film: Carey Mulligan, who plays the second half of the McGwyer-Mortimer duo; Charles’ unseen former partner, Marie; and his new love interest, in the form of Wallis Island’s solitary shop-owner, Amanda (Sian Clifford).

It’s funny to think that my friend pitched the film to me as a “Rom-com”, given that in the original concept there was not even a single female character, let alone any romance. Yet from this viewer’s perspective at least, it is the addition of the three women (including the unseen Marie) that make the film.

Indeed, this major tweak to the plotline was the very element that ultimately brought tears to my eyes, as I considered the relational loss and loneliness that provide the common ground between the otherwise worlds-apart super-fan and idol.

I saw the same look in this woman’s eyes as I had seen in Charles’s as he watched his hero play the song that was his former partner’s favourite.

I was also forced to reflect upon the certain similarity I seem to share with the blundering Charles, having once lived two doors down from the real Carey Mulligan and, during our sole face-to-face encounter, chose the moment to express my great admiration for the music of her husband, Marcus Mumford, before awkwardly and very swiftly beating my retreat.

I am embarrassed to admit that I even later posted a copy of one of my books into the Mumford letterbox - possibly that very same day - in the hope that it might engender the start of a beautiful friendship.

Alas, I never heard from them again.

A similar motivation is clearly the driving force behind Charles’ invitation of his two idols to his home, which is filled with their memorabilia, as the audience is encouraged to consider how they may feel if given the opportunity to host their own heroes.

“Never meet your heroes,” Charles quips in the original short, but in the film the relationships are allowed to reach greater depths and, in spite of some initial suggestions that Charles’ affections may be bordering on stalker-like, it soon becomes clear that there is nothing sinister about this loveable simpleton.

The rave reviews the film has received, years after the idea was first hatched, are also surely an encouragement to any of us who may have long held a dream but never seen it come to pass.

The message of The Ballad of Wallis Island, I believe, is that we should hold onto such dreams and cling tightly to the things that matter most.

Before sitting down to write this article, I was walking through a local park when I passed a young woman who was sitting on the grass, crying, and I approached her to ask if she was all right.

It transpired that the woman’s partner had died a year before and that she liked to come back to the tree under which she was sitting to remember him, as it was a special place for them.

I saw the same look in this woman’s eyes as I had seen in Charles’s as he watched his hero play the song that was his former partner’s favourite.

"Cling to the things that matter most,” the woman told me, as we parted ways. And that’s certainly the message that both film and chance encounter have impressed upon me.

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