I am ageless in the way that people in the public eye often are frozen in time by a single event … I am also ageless because people don’t always see me as human. This week we discuss why Black British Mental Health Matters with the highly acclaimed actor David Harewood and journalist and documentary maker Marverine Cole. Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder introduce an essential collection of essays arguing how and why we need to fight for Black lives to matter - not just for Black people, but for British society as a whole. Demonstrators carried handmade placards with the names of black Britons killed by the British police; they demanded justice for members of the Windrush generation threatened with deportation and the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire; they decried the high Covid-19 death rate among communities of colour.

The essays offer a 360-degree portrait of the black British experience, taking in health, the criminal justice system, politics, art, journalism, business and education. A year later, Black British Lives Matter, edited by Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder, takes time to reflect on this extraordinary movement. In 1816, Richard Fitzwilliam donated vast sums of money, literature and art to the University of Cambridge, creating the Museum that is named after him.

This week we discuss one big idea - reparations - paying Black British people, and Black people around the world, for the slavery and colonialism they suffered.

With classics such as Ted Hughes's The Iron Man and award-winners including Emma Carroll's Letters from the Lighthouse, Faber Children's Books brings you the best in picture books, young reads and classics. Honestly there is no other podcast out there like this and which manage such delicate and challenging issues in such a human and even funny way. Contributors include David Olusoga, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Kit de Waal, Dr Anne-Marie-Imafidon, Sir David Adjaye, Leroy Logan and Professor Kehinde Andrews. But Fitzwilliam’s generosity was only possible because of the wealth his grandfather accumulated in part through the transatlantic slave trade. Recognising Black British experience within the Black Lives Matter movement, nineteen prominent Black figures explain why Black lives should be celebrated when too often they are undervalued.

Home to William Golding, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sally Rooney, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Max Porter, Ingrid Persaud, Anna Burns and Rachel Cusk, among many others, Faber is proud to publish some of the greatest novelists from the early twentieth century to today. Marcus Ryder has over twenty-five years’ experience working in television and journalism and is a leader on the issue of diversity in the media. It is an effective primer for those keen to understand why Floyd’s death drove hundreds of thousands of people to the street. This week we discuss why Black British Hair Matters with activist Stephanie Cohen from the Halo Collective, and filmmaker Kevin Morosky. Acknowledging this story for the first time has led to new discoveries about the objects Fitzwilliam donated, the people who collected them, and the cultures that created them.