Host of golden daffodils March 23, 2008

It was when returning from a visit to Thomas Clarkson at his house at the foot of Ullswater Lake that the Wordsworths spotted the famous daffodils dancing in the breeze. Clarkson had come to the Lake District on the back of his egalitarian and Quaker efforts to abolish the slave-trade. A campaign taken up by the more powerful and charismatic William Wilberforce (who also had a house in The Lakes) who saw it more as his religious duty to change the World.

In my mind the daffodils, particularly the dancing type so described, are forever connected with the freedom of slaves.