‘I felt absolutely sick’: John Gladstone’s heir on his family’s role in slavery

Charles Gladstone, whose family will travel to the Caribbean this week to apologise for its slave-owning past. Photograph: Mark Waugh/Mark Waugh Manchester Press Photography Ltd

For Charlie Gladstone, the question is not what sort of ancestor he had, but what sort of ancestor he wants to be.

When he learned about John Gladstone’s involvement in slavery he was moved to tears. “I felt absolutely terrible. I really, really hated it. It was a shock and I felt absolutely sick.”