The Prince and the Plunder - Book Launch
Join us for the launch of "The Prince and the Plunder" with author Andrew Heavens, and the man who found some actual plunder in Edinburgh, Fr John McLuckie!
About The Prince and the Plunder - Book Launch
Just after the turn of the millennium, Fr John McLuckie was digging around in a cupboard in St John's Church in Edinburgh and found a battered Victorian box at the back of a shelf. Inside was a lost treasure - a treasure so sacred that it can't be described here - that had been plundered by British soldiers invading the East African empire of Ethiopia 130 years earlier in 1868.
He and his congregation decided that the only thing to do was to return it to Ethiopia. The treasure - known as a Tabot, a representation of the Ark of the Covenant - was handed over in front of the world's press at a ceremony at St John's attended by Ethiopian Orthodox priests, members of Orthodox congregations across Britain, a delegation of Rastafarians from the Ethiopian World Federation and diplomats. When the Tabot got back to Ethiopia, tens of thousands of people came out onto the streets to welcome it home.
Andrew Heavens was watching the ceremony. He decided to give up his job at the church and head over to Ethiopia to work as a journalist and find out more about the story of the Tabot and how it came to Edinburgh. The result was the book "The Prince and the Plunder" which follows the soldiers, the plunder and a six-year-old prince who was also brought to Britain after the fighting.
Join us as the we revisit the story of the Edinburgh Tabot and look beyond it to other pieces of loot and plunder in Scotland, a country that has led the way in recent years in restitution and reexamining the legacy of empire.
Adding to the significance, the talk takes place on the 155th anniversary of the plundering of the Ethiopian mountain fortress of Maqdala on April 13, 1868.
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