 Hello and welcome to HistFest 2021, my name is Rebecca O'Deal and I'm the Director of HistFest. I'm so thankful for you all for joining us this weekend and I can hardly believe that it's nearly over. Do check out future HistFest events via the website which is www.histfest.org. For those of you joining us just for this event there are a couple of housekeeping points to note. Using the menu above you can provide feedback on the event and also donate to the British Library should you wish. The library is a charity and your support really does help to open up a world of inspiration and learning to everyone. Your feedback is also incredibly important in helping the library to plan future cultural events. You can find a tab on the menu to the bookshop where you can browse a range of titles from all of the festivals, authors and speakers. Below the video just to remind you there are social media links there should you wish to continue the conversation on other platforms after the event. If you're doing this please do use the hashtag HistFest 2021. Now without further ado I am really really excited to introduce this next event. Black tutors, activists and midwives. When historical fact meets historical fiction we have a huge panel for this session so I will list them for you now. The panellists include academic novelist and founder of the Jalak Prize Dr Sonny Singh. She's also the author of the Fantastic Hotel Arcadia. We have the author and screenwriter Katherine Johnson who has written award-winning books such as Freedom and she's also the screenwriter of an adaptation of Black Tudors. We're also joined by historian and historical consultant Dr Jacqueline Riding whose works include Peter Lu and the Jacobites film version of Peter Lu with Mike Lee and we're also joined by journalist, stage and screenwriter Juliet Jilts Romero whose latest plays are The Whip and an adaptation of The Story of Medea and last but not least the actor and author and science communicator Stephen McGahn who's most famous at the moment for starring in Call the Midwife. Enjoy. Hello and welcome. I am Sonny Singh and this is his first 2021. This is the session on Black Tudors, activists and midwives. When historical fact meets historical fiction and I am delighted today to chair the session with some of my favorite people. Some I know and some I have just read. So very quick introductions, Katherine Johnson, award-winning author and screenwriter, also writer of one of my favorite historical fiction books, The Curious Tale of Lady Carabou. Jacqueline Riding historian and art historian specializing in 18th century, Stephen McGahn, a acclaimed actor. I'm not sure if Stephen needs an introduction but nevertheless. Nevertheless. And Juliet Jilts Romero, a journalist and award-winning writer for stage and screen. Welcome everyone. I hope this will be a conversation and it will be free flowing. So I will just start with a few questions and hopefully we can just pick up and go with it. Now, of course, history and historical fiction, we are in big times right now, you know, these are contentious times or more so than usual. And Katherine, I think I wanted to start with you partly because Black Tudors has so much buzz around it and yet it's walking that very fine line with the sort of anger and fury about rewriting history and, you know, how could we wipe water or is it the other way around? I don't know anymore. But tell us about it. Tell us what that process has been because it's history, it's historical fiction and now it's an adaptation. Well, yeah. I mean, it's Miranda Kaufman's book. She wrote a book called Black Tudors and what we've done with the drama, it's for TV. It's like, you know, it is the difference between Orange Juice and Sunny Delight. I am not a historian. I'm looking, we've sort of milked and pulled a drama around. We've taken some of the characters and sort of made them bigger and given them stories. But what Miranda book does is absolutely, without qualification says, there have been all sorts of people here and at this time. I mean, what's difficult is that before industrial slavery, very often if you're wealthy, people did not mention your color, your ethnicity with secondary. That was a difference. That's what's been fantastic, actually. Just exploring ideas about difference before there was industrial slavery, which codified how you thought about otherness in that way because it was a commercial thing. It's about how can we make money? How can we other this entire group of people in order to exploit them? And this happens before. And in fact, in our period, slavery exists in parts of the world, but it's like an equal opportunity thing, you know? So it's not the difference in being black was not about being lesser. I mean, they had ideas about purity and goodness. But that wasn't a blanket thing. It wasn't all black people are this or even started thinking about themselves as white at that time. That was not that income for another 150 200 years. So it was not. It's completely different. And that's been interesting. The stories, everyone, you know, stories, we all have stories. There are stories in every period of stories about, you know, it's not that's not the unusual thing. The unusual thing has been exploring a world before industrial slavery and that the sort of racism that we have today. So I mean, it's still not it's still, you know, whether or not it will get made, we have to see. But it was a real absolute joy and privilege for me. My period that I know most about is the 18th century, but I am not a historian. So I have to learn, you know, and what one thing's fascinating, sorry, I will shut up soon. And where we put our story was in 1600, the Moroccan ambassador came to London to make an alliance invited by Elizabeth I and her government because England was isolated from Europe because of the Catholicism Protestant thing. So England had no powerful friends. This is before, you know, England hadn't come up. Yes, they'd beaten the Spanish in the Armada, but it was all still a bit touch and go Spain was the big power. And England, a Christian country came this close to making an alliance with a Muslim country, which was unbelievable that this was, it was incredible that the Moroccan delegation, you know, that arrived in Tower Hill and rode up the strand, everybody, you know, three years later, Shakespeare wrote a fellow. It was, it was an incredible time. And that's, thank you Catherine, because it nicely leads me to, I promise this, we haven't, we haven't practised it, but it nicely leads me to the question that I want for everyone here, where everyone's been part of these amazing projects and adaptations and productions. And that approach history and historical fiction, I suppose in some ways, in these really bold, different ways. These are not the period dramas that I have to say. I have, I no longer have the ability to watch yet another Jane Austen adaptation with Pretty Frogs. I am very sorry, cancel me, but you've all done these amazing things. And Catherine, you just kind of hinted at it. How difficult is it to get these off the grounds? How difficult is it to get it made? What are some of the things that people come up with and say? What are some of the blockages then? Well, because I'm the writer, I haven't been dealing with, I've been working with a fantastic company, Silverprint, who I must say have been, I'm an old cynic, I've been a writer for half my life, more than half my life, I'm very old. And they are the first company that have been so supportive in this, unbelievably so. So I have been removed from all that. But it's happening, I mean, you look, it is happening more. I think people are looking in the wider world, they're looking for a way to tell these stories again, to give the, because there seems to be an insatiable appetite for, in this country, Tudors, Victorians and Jane Austen. And you know, so maybe it's a way of telling these stories to ourselves about ourselves. And obviously history is like science fiction, in that science fiction is a way of looking at now. And historical fiction is always dependent on when it is produced. It's now, we're just looking at now, in different frocks, whatever people say. So I think maybe that's part of it, I don't know. I can just say about television certainly in production, because I've also been involved in the production side before. And just echoing what Catherine is saying generally about the challenges that you can be removed from the challenges and certain artistic sides. But the basic things are still the same and not often thought about. But firstly, history was very expensive. It generally is a lot. So there's a budgeting constraint. If you have a national broadcaster like the BBC now, I mean, per hour it's going to cost a lot more if you are all in frocks than if you are just in a contemporary police drama. Then there's also a peculiar thing about fashions. I've pitched things before where you can have an idea for something and through no fault of your own you could have been developing this project. And they did something they think is similar the year before or it didn't make money the year before. Now you can't control those things. So those challenges, those physical challenges of catching the sort of zeitgeist to make the right drama at the right time. Historical drama goes through fashions. Remember the year of and everybody was complaining about along there are the perennials like the endless Jane Austen. But there are also periods where it was apparently all bonnet drama. It was all this drama. It was all but if you look closely it actually changes fashion. And when Colin Midwife came along it was nobody did modern history post-war history as a period drama. So for a while people wouldn't even count that because it was in a doubting world. It was in a world where you still dressed in this way and you still did things they did things like that. And so there are challenges getting these things made and convincing people that all that money that they put they put it is going to be a worthwhile reinterpretation of thinking about things like Bridget and a worthwhile new take on some idea of history that will catch some wave that will be useful to them and it does go through fashions so you have to work within those fashions. I'm going to slightly defend Pretty Frogs because Peter Lou of course is the period of Jane Austen and it starts at 1815 and then ends in 1819 but it's like Jane Austen on steroids or a parallel universe where Jane Austen sort of exists. I suppose it comes in from a Jane Austen point of view you've got the Regent himself you know the Prince Regent comes in but it's the same period but it's in a way I'd like to just highlight the fact that you know I think people might consider Peter Lou to be just a different period of history to Jane Austen but it's actually running in parallel. So it's sort of so we did have Pretty Frogs but then we also had the complete plethora you know the whole diversity of society from as I say the Prince Regent the Prime Minister you know scenes in parliament right the way through the middle class is the middling sort which sort of Jane Austen deals with or gentry and so on and then right down to the to or through to the labouring and working class and all that had to be research which is obviously it's not a normal Jane Austen drama because you do have the labouring and working class centre front and centre of the entire piece so they were elements of the periods which really required some digging into and also the period where women are radical and political which again was full square and centre uh in in the movie so uh so Jane Austen but not I think you and Catherine make great sorry I just wanted to I think you and Catherine make this same point really well which is that I never cease to be amazed by by recency bias by the the idea that people look back when they when we look at period drama is we add so much of the present day to it and our own prejudices and what you two have both done is teased out those remarkable um those those hidden parts of real history within those periods and you've brought them up but people when we started even in a 50s drama people will tell you what you're doing wrong they will tell you no no the 50s wasn't like that no no you can't no and one of the classic examples of that was I suppose when we first started was um the streets too clean we don't like the streets what are the streets there's nothing on the streets where all this sanitised working classes and actually there's a very interesting I think class point we were being criticised by by people because the working class didn't look working class enough i.e they didn't look dirty they didn't the streets didn't look dirty enough now if you go and look at photographs of the 50s of course and what the reply was well what's the litter in the 50s tell me about the litter are they mcdonald's packets are they what's and actually what you see in 50s photographs is clean streets because they had a lot more work than doing them and they had just less junk that we have so that's a tiny example but what but the point I wanted to make about that was people would look back and would tell you ordinary people in the street would say no no no no that's not and it's their idea and spin of history that then gets warped and you too certainly for me why I'm a why I'm a fan is you two are teasing out these real parts of history and giving it the variety it deserves but sometimes the prejudices of not only the public but the TV companies as well will lay over that oh of course of course yeah you know there's definitely a lot of things Juliet in I think sorry sorry Jacqueline I keep keep trying to bring up you know um partly because I think you've made some really interesting points statement about um the recency of things and how we see recent history but Juliet the Windrush Chronicles I think it just I mean you know that is that is not just history that is lived and living history in so many ways I mean we are we are still living through that awful scandal and and I want you to tell me about how or tell us all about this this what happens when you write something and produce I mean what happens with something that is so contentious it's recent history it's ongoing history and legacy and living legacy and history well my backgrounds in journalism I spent close to 19 years as a a senior reporter and um and and producer so I'm all about I love news and current affairs and I love research and I believe that in order to kind of like attack these these subjects which for some people you know that they because they don't know about it they're not ready in the history book they might feel uncomfortable with the presentation of this material you have to have tent poles if you like so um for example the the the whip um which is about the behind scenes battle for abolition in 1833 I knew that I needed to get hold of the um to you know the freedom of information about the fact that we were all paying off this massive compensation amount paid to slave owners in 1833 the modern equivalent being 20 billion everybody working up until 2015 paid off that amount which was 40 percent of the annual budget in 1833 you know this is information that you will not find in in in school books and people can get very offended by this um so and I also went to the the House of Commons Library I read Hansard from 1833 to 1834 not only to get a real grasp of the time and the language but to make sure that you know the the drama was was was fact-based I had to fictionalize my characters and it is a fine balancing act you know I have a character Lord Maybourne he's based on Lord Melbourne we've seen the controversy with um I think it was a TV series you know Queen Victoria about his alleged relationship with with with her and I didn't want any of that kind of snark around what I felt was an important storytelling it also combines the history of the mills and the way that the English working class were enslaved in 1833 so the play is about the collision of the reform act you know allowing working men to to be able to to vote um reducing the hours of children's in mail so I went to quarry bank mill um and also abolition and I got hold of the actual abolition act and then discovered that slaves were then required to work for up to seven years unpaid apprentices all of this is material that is not in the public domain you know unless you research and dig it's it's not in the school curriculum so you know you can get pushback it's it's a journey of education and I do like to approach a subject from a point of not knowing because then I think I can take an audience along with me another drama I did which was for um was a rage afford drama was about the riots of 1919 um the piece was called one hot summer demobilized black veterans were attacked in the streets this happened and it was mirrored in the united states may june 1919 you know black businesses were set up a light it started in Liverpool and and spread around the country you will not read this in in any school text what I had to do was go to the british newspaper library get hold of the the reportage starting in Liverpool with all those newspapers and national newspapers and then I interwoven um factual reportage with my fictionalized characters because again where the journalism comes in I you know I am very keen to defend anything that I write so I will establish the backs first that those those tent poles um and then you know create drama to to to draw an audience into that they can experience the reanimation of of the past and if I may I'm just going to use one more example which I absolutely love and it's from hillion mantel's wolf hall there is a scene between henry the eighth and crommel henry the eighth is having this dreadful nightmare about his his brother and he's married his his brother's wife catherine and you know he wants in in his desperate to know why he's he's remembering his brother at this particular point in his reign because his brother is dead and crommel is infighted into his chambers and has to calm him down and he touches his shoulder and crosses a line and in many ways that's the beginning of the end of of of of crommel but what I love about the scene is that you know the the the book the drama tv series play it's all based on fact but as writers we have to get into the nooks and necranies historical um fiction is about the emotional journey of our characters placed within the context of historical fact and it is a tightrope and people will come for you particularly if they don't know what you're talking about but I believe that we have the right to allow this generation and future generations to reexamine the past and drama tv fair to film I think is the most compelling way to do it no I I I agree I the the thing about the riots in 1919 which were mirrored in fact by riots in 1947 um in Liverpool as well which my father was actually in it was one of the reasons you know he just come over and um a pre-windrush but the same thing and and it was it was one of the most frightening periods of his life but that thing about you know my people like me and the future generations we are I mean I am English I'm an English person this is my history this is my children's history and it is not just oh it's not just black history it's everybody's history and I think this is really important I'm writing British history and also sonny you asked me about windrush so I was very proud to be involved in the windrush conicals series and I wrote about the depth of fire um 13 young black kids were died um despite men being seen jumping out of an austin princess car and lobbing um what looked like petrol bombs at the building the kids were blamed um for this and when I wrote it a lot of people they thanked me for it and because they didn't know the history this was 1981 it's not that that long ago this was shocking to me but also it's it's galvanizing to be able to bring a story like that because you know it led to the largest or rather most contemporary black march from deptford to high park thousands bust in from across the country to take part in that because we had no black MPs at the time we had no political representation and the politicians were not talking about the children who died in that fire several months later we then had the the the the the brickston rights which spread around the country and then by 87 we had the election which brought in our first black MPs but a lot of that political will came out of the fact that we were not represented and our voice and our stories were not being told can I go back to something that pick up on something that juliet has said because I think what connects everything that we're doing whether we're doing a drama or um tv film or indeed writing a history book which would seem to be sort of more traditional history is storytelling and that's that's the key to it and as a historian and art historian who has written books of history and art history I learned a massive amount about storytelling from working with mightly in particular yeah so I worked on mr turner and then straight into peter lou and and I think that's what unites all of it and I think that as a historian I would beg my fellow historians um to not be sniffy about you know the so-called you know uh authenticity or not of drama uh tv film and so on but to tune into what's great always great about it which is the storytelling it's about character dialogue narrative etc etc historians who do exactly that can learn a lot about the way that dramatists um historical fiction authors and so on actually move the narrative on you know to an extent even historians edit history because you can't cover everything um so you pick and choose your cast which is how I now view it I choose my cast um you know you get banged for your buck with a particular individual who appears in various places like this book I'm writing at the moment on on Hogarth William Hogarth biography I haven't talked about all the people he's ever met I've got a reduced cast and I've created a narrative my narrative of Hogarth's life now it's not going to be everyone's narrative of Hogarth's life I'm rather hoping somebody somewhere big hint might transfer it to a sort of tv or film but in a way that's that's that's my experience has been working with Mike and other directors and writers and professionals in tv and film and so on I've picked up little tips for how I can do my my other day job which is as a as an author of history and art history so I just wanted to register that authenticity is great but if you haven't got good characters good dialogue and good narrative you know it doesn't matter what you're producing I personally I switch off to add a fan letter to you all for that I mean basically I think that I'm optimistic when when I come in my in my sort of from the lovely world and when we see the other side of it the consultants like yourself yet actually the historians I talk to in the right is is you get it then that actually a lot of you out there are doing great work and you you get on to set and you understand those distinctions and good scientists too do consulting on the scientific aspects of drama they can do science fiction films but they get it they get what the demands of storytelling are so so I'm more optimistic I think some historians don't and some people working in the ivory towers though but a lot of people really do and and just to pick up on your other point very quickly is is that I myself before when I've written about this I'm fascinated by this authenticity thing and I make a distinction between what are what are called accuracy and authenticity I think you need a minimum and sufficient degree of accuracy historical accuracy clinical accuracy if you're making a medical drama beyond that as a starting point the rest is I think the word you used is authenticity and so you create the narrative world which feels authentic which is authentic enough which people can feel happy that they have enough fact or ten poles as you called it before Juliet where they know they've got enough and then they're okay with suspension of disbelief they're okay being taken to a world which might have imagination in it that's okay that's good for history that's good for drama you know and I think that guys like you working in that world they're doing a fantastic job I have to say I think Mike famously says that this is a movie not a documentary so that's he that summarizes exactly what you've just said yeah just to I mean we you know as dramatists we're in the business of understanding the extremes of human behavior and that's why we do you know once we have our temples we then have to stray within you know from certain boundaries to be able to bring an audience with us the first play that I wrote at the gates of Gaza which was about the British West Indies regiment fighting in what was Palestine read like a panorama script and I had to learn you know and that that was the wonderful journey for me as a writer I had to learn about character and how character drives plot and it's been a fantastic journey so I'm very character driven which is which as it is as it should be I was very overwhelmed by the history I was researching at the time I think that's why I kind of ended up with something quite dry I mean I went to the Imperial War Museum I was reading the diaries of men who died in the field and it's it was as I said it was overwhelming but there comes a point where the dramatist has to have the courage to absorb all of that and then just have the freedom to reimagine and also write from a point of well for me sometimes it's it's it's it's rage I used to get very frustrated by the fact that everyone knows about ANZACs everyone knows about the Australian support in the First World War the New Zealanders and yet we have you know black men from the Caribbean and from Africa whose histories are ignored they weren't allowed to march in the victory parades after the First World War so people are wondering what are they doing in the country so I get very upset about these things it's like it's like a complete erasure and again this is why as dramatists we offer the opportunity to re-examine and to have to look with fresh eyes at the past because it informs our present. Can I say something I think for me what's most important is to make history and the idea of history accessible you you know I have no qualifications I don't you know I didn't even I don't even have a GCSE or an O level because I was so rubbish and it's not that it's about making these stories accessible to as many people as possible I mean I come from a background for writing for young people as well and and I think that the best drama does really difficult interesting deep stuff but in a way that everybody can access so I think that's important it's not history isn't this it's not it's not it's for everyone it's not just for people who are used to reading very dense books although I do like books but it's it's about dense ones I know it's accessible and especially they line on your foot I just wanted again to go back to something that Juliet said and Catherine and Stephen have covered it to an extent just as a historian you know I think the importance is that you read that dense book Catherine, Stephen and Juliet and then therefore you're in a position of knowledge and then it's up to you what you do with it you know because you're the creatives you're you know this is again what I learned at the knee of the master uh Mike Lee is that my job onset or during rehearsals or in the improvisations is to give him as far as we know the information what actually happened or may have happened in 1819 on St Peter's Field etc and Mike says thank you very much that's great I'm now going to do something completely different but at least I know what did happen or may have happened so he makes a creative decision based on knowledge yeah and that's whether historians that's why we're there we're there to assist and to hopefully inspire but also just to stand back and go your job it's over to you I've done my bit I'll have that as my motto creative decisions based on knowledge yeah thank you and also I'm sorry I think what you do is collaborative too I think it's wonderful at its best sometimes I know I've watched directors turning to to people like you and say look okay we want to achieve this how would they have done to give me the answers not simply so I can either choose them or discard them or something else but enable me to make this beat of drama work so if we can't make it work in this way because that didn't actually happen like that if if I you know when we work I'm watching those collaborations sometimes becomes something real involving stakeholder people in history like in my sort of modern historical drama you bring stakeholders in from the time and say no what names did they used to use how did they used to do this okay we can't do it like that you guys know to work with us walk alongside us and work and then you will often find something even better because and it's based on a real historical framework but it was different to what you maybe originally set out to do but it works beautifully because it fulfills those needs of drama as well I think that particularly works with something like language because you know my my bible when I'm on set and with going through the dialogue because as you know with Mike it's improvised and then honed and and sort of sharpened and so on as you're doing the improvisations my bible is the Oxford English Dictionary because sometimes you can get a gem of a word that actually has a kind of correspondence to modern language but allows you to at that point root it in the period but will be understandable to the audience my favorite one was bullscutter which is a Lancastrian dialect word this is for Peter Lou if you have watched it again watch out for bullscutter originally obviously the the actress said another word and I said I don't think we can use that word but I'll try and find you something that's more accurate or closer to the period to the dialect and lo and behold there was bullscutter it just means rubbish it doesn't mean you know what you think it might mean but the audience was listening and think I know what she's talking about I think uh but it's an authentic word it's something so it's those little bits where history can enliven and add another layer and as Stephen says it might even be the inspiration it might be the answer to something that everyone's been searching for guess what history might actually have the answer it's not always the case but in other in other circumstances it certainly is I'm going to pull out something from things that all of you have said and I'm really fascinated by partly because I'm working on a on an idea that's going to have to walk that fine line where what are some of the ethical questions what are some of the boundaries because I think it's a really interesting one to think about how you know yes it's a creative decision based on knowledge as you said but are there ethical lines are there ethical ways of making that creative decision based on knowledge because of course a creative could as you said you know completely choose to ignore the knowledge um and you know my you know my personal bugbear is very similar to Juliet's you know the fact that you know this country forgets that no it wasn't the English troops that won the Second World War it wasn't even Britain that won you know the Second World War um and and so it really it variates me but and yet you see you know these wonderful period dramas massive levels of historians very very knowledgeable some of my favorite historians working on those productions as consultants and then out comes the the product and they've been entirely ignored by the creative what are some of those lines what are some of those those issues that we need to be maybe creatives need to be aware of not so much as historians I think I've been lucky with my creatives so I can make that statement I just I feel quite horrified at the idea that you'd be ignored completely it does beg the question why did you bring the historians in in the first place and there's all sorts of reasons for that presumably but I'll hand over to the creatives but yeah I think I've been lucky do you want to go Juliet sorry you had your mouth um I was just kind of like thinking that I mean I think two things one of the reasons why I work so hard at this is because as a black woman you know there is pushback about someone like myself apparently trampling over British history um so I am it's not just about being careful it's about proving yeah I understand the history um and that it's indisputable yeah um because as I said you know it's like I I'm I'm now doing the the kind of dramas that is traditionally in the um sphere of you know white male writers and people are uncomfortable with that I really think that truth is important and we're living in a post-truth world and just listening to your questions and that's what I was kind of thinking where my mouth was slightly open I think was that there was a film U-571 I don't know whether um people remember it and it was about so that these these British sub-mariners boarded this German U-boat led by this this man David Baum and they captured the enigma machine and turned the course of of of the war I mean incredible bravery and then Hollywood comes along and it does its own version starring I think John Bon Jovi, Matthew Mohamed and Harvey Kytel and it's an American um group of sub-mariners who board this this boat and of course it's lavish drama that was made and I was profoundly offended by this now to an American audience you know they they they probably don't really care and for Hollywood once it makes a lot of money but I just think it's it's wrong you know to so um dismiss the historical fact of it and I don't know if the writer I should research this if the writer was British or or or American but personally I don't think I could have stuck with a project like that because it's so untruthful yeah in that instance that's fiction not historical fiction in my opinion so you know history I mean where is the history if you get that basic fact wrong or you've you know decided to ignore it it just yeah that that feels that's fiction yeah there is a constant tension between what we would like to be out there and seen by as many people as possible and private enterprise and Hollywood and fine and we cannot I'm probably reasonably confident in saying that the gathered group here could probably not as individuals go out and finance our entire on series and the minute whether you want to make a record you find the minute you go out and you're asking for millions of pounds to make drama there is a tension there is a tension with the producers there is a tension for the markets they wish to sell to and we cannot ignore that now I'm saying we cannot ignore that I'm saying we should push on it I'm saying that absolutely we should push through aware that that there will always be some form of pushback somewhere from some people who want who have their own agendas for for sales and and whatever it's always a problem and I think that sometimes I've heard of people who've left productions because they've borne no relation to the original ideas I've heard that time and time again where they just go off at a tangent and films particularly are very strange beasts they take a long time to get made and they're they're very strange at least television has a sort of especially in Britain it has a kind of a a certain predictability where you get to something green lit and you kind of it has a you know a thing but still it has a said earlier it has tastes it has biases I want to say something about the ethic thing which I know because I have turned down certain work because it's it's also a difference between TV and books so it's really difficult I think if the uh protagonist if if the people who lived through it are still here and I'm talking I'm thinking about certain uh it really important things in British history uh I think that's a massive responsibility for one writer and obviously it's good that TV can deal with you know is a collaborative form film it's a collaborative form but that can mean that things get lost because you are constantly aware that the amount of money things cost that the vision can get can change which it does and in some cases that's always for the better and the difference then with books when you book you have if you write a book obviously it's a much cheaper thing you can just write it but then there's another problem which if you write a book about somebody who is important in history but has massive flaws especially when you're writing for young people the pressure is on to present this person as present their story as oh it's lovely when you want to say actually this person is incredibly problematic you know and this is something it's something that with one book at the moment I'm struggling with a lot because this person is incredibly problematic and there are so few black Britons of note obviously they're quite a lot that we know nothing about but you know and and I think it's important that not not everybody is just perfect and because there's this plethora of white people in history who are not perfect there's a pressure to say oh yeah but that person because he exists because we know about him can he please knock the sides off I'd like to talk in response to that about I don't know if you've seen Mr Turner but that was obviously a film about one of the greatest artists he's ever lived as far as I'm concerned but there was contradictions and problematic elements of his character particularly in his relationship with women and the way he treated women and that he's in that's in part of the historical record but try and tease that out of some of the biographies that I had to read before we actually started working on it you know they were somewhat sort of pushed back or sort of laughed about and its seduction not you know and all this sort of thing and that the language the particular language around in this instance Turner and his his women and the way he removed his children from his will and stuff like that and so if you've seen Mr Turner you know his relationship with women is absolutely full square you know it's it's there was very little information on the women and that all had to be teased out and and what little we had then had to be in a creative way formed into characters and narrative and and so on and so forth so there's an example of a a problem or a kind of contradiction between you know the sensitivity of the artist of the of the painter in the same body having somebody who's very dismissive or might might seem to according to the historical record might seem to treat the unsensitive to other human beings particularly women and so on so I think I'm particularly of the many things I'm proud of with Mr Turner is the way that it took the waltz and all it said the contradictions we can't explain them because guess what this human beings we're contradictory and that's part of the joy of working on as I say working on William Hogarth what a contradictory character he is and the contradictions is where the color you know the life liveliness of the life comes from otherwise it would be a very dull story if if they were all as as Catherine said it all went nicely and sweetly and there was no trauma or problems in the character or difficulties or contradictions which I think just we've just been given the five minute warning but I wanted Juliet I wanted to bring you in partly for something that that Catherine has started to bring up and this this kind of a pressure and I know I feel that this um you know when we're writing stories about people who aren't often written about about groups of people it's no longer just a character it's in somehow you know there there are many many many white characters and they can be good or bad and evil and often in the same piece of work but when there's so few um movies or books or tv series in my case about um South Asians you know there's there's a real real need to kind of go you know should I be making them better maybe I you know should they be nicer you know should they go you know clean do I should I talk about the the terrible stuff because I just want to write a character what do you make of that Juliet how do you how do you I tied myself in knots um my first draft about the gates of Gaza because I was very uncomfortable accessing the the extremes of behavior of black men at war and fortunately you know I was able to throw the research over my shoulder just think these are people they're fascinating and to it's what I call the the Sidney Poitier syndrome he played wonderful noble characters you know but that had its place you know I think that we do need and I think Mr. Turner was superb by the way it's about you know accessing people from a 360 degree angle and I think that's what I've learned as a dramatist I don't feel the need to just put people on a platform because you know of the history is is is so noble um I think that if you're going to carry an audience they have to be able to walk in in the shoes of your characters they need to see their humanity at all peaks um but it's it was a real journey you know um I wanted to to to write this glorious piece about the British West Indies Regiment and I had to forget that you know I was writing a piece about men at war yeah and now I'm going to try and give you one last question for all of you what's next what's coming up give us a taster before we go very quickly 1966 call the midwife out on tv next week um England wins the World Cup but underneath the surface there is darkness as well as light okay I'm doing something contemporary I'm looking at criminal justice at the moment but um I also have two other historical projects but I'm not allowed to talk about the record so watch this space I'm doing an illustrated history of the black presence with fiction and non-fiction it's like it's going to be the sort of book I would have liked with nice pictures for Walker for children and I am doing a lot of other things I've got well I've mentioned it already William Hogarth it's Hogarth life in progress which comes out on the 1st of July um I'm working on a film about a boxer early late 18th early 19th century pugilist prize fighter um and I've got another project which is about the criminal justice system in the 18th century but I can't really talk about it I'll read that wow well um thank you all of you um we could be here for a very long time I my list of questions is not even quarter way through but um thank you very much this has been absolutely wonderful and enlightening and educational for me I've got lots of ideas of what to what to take to my own work so um thank you very much thank you sunny lovely to meet everybody yeah lovely to meet you all thank you thank you to you our audience for joining us today and a special thanks to today's panelists as well please do remember to send feedback if you can and also check out the British Library's what's on pages to see what other events are coming up please also check out HISTFEST's website as well www.histfest.org thank you