The Persistence of Memory is a history of the public memory of transatlantic slavery in the largest slave-trading port city in Europe, from the end of the 18th century into the 21st century; from history to memory. Mapping this public memory over more than two centuries reveals the ways in which dissonant pasts, rather than being 'forgotten histories', persist over time as a contested public debate. This public memory, intimately intertwined with constructions of 'place' and 'identity', has been shaped by legacies of transatlantic slavery itself, as well as other events, contexts and phenomena along its trajectory, revealing the ways in which current narratives and debate around difficult histories have histories of their own. By the 21st century, Liverpool, once the 'slaving capital of the world', had more permanent and long-lasting memory work relating to transatlantic slavery than any other British city. The long history of how Liverpool, home to Britain's oldest continuous black presence, has publicly 'remembered' its own slaving past, how this has changed over time and why, is of central significance and relevance to current and ongoing efforts to face contested histories, particularly those surrounding race, slavery and empire.

Mr. Roscoe’s Garden is one of the key components of the Fragrant Liverpool Project, a uniquely international conceptual art project which explores the stories, rites, and exchanges that occur when a flower is cut and placed in the human hand. Exploring the storied history of the Liverpool Botanic Gardens, established by William Roscoe in 1802, this volume discusses everything from its legendary orchid collection to the strange and rare plants that arrived through the city’s ports to the indignity of the Gardens’ closing in the 1980s. No book has ever before explored the Liverpool Botanic Gardens and Jyll Bradley’s painstaking design makes this volume a work of art in itself—perfectly timed to coincide with Gardens’ reopening and the reemergence of the collection at the Chelsea Flower Show for the first time in thirty years.