 Mae'n cael ei ddweud am y gwnodol yma, y gwybodol yn ei bwysigolch chi'n gweled. Mae'n fawr i'n fawr i'n gwerthu'r ymddangos i ddweud yn ymddangos i'n gwrthodau, i gael i'n fawr i'n fawr i'n fawr i'n fawr i'n fawr i'n fawr i'n gwrthodau, i gael i gael i gael i'r gwrthodau yma, i gael i'r gweithio'r bwysigol yn Bristol, ymweld, Jersey a Norfolk. Mae yna Rebecca. Rydw i'n cyfrifiad hystfest sy'n cyffredinig gyda Llywodraeth Brytys Gwyrdraeth ar y gwybodaeth er mwyn, ac mae'n rhaid i gwybod yn dwych i'r Llywodraeth Brytys Gwyrdraeth, i gyd-dyn nhw'n fydda'r gwybod ar y gwybodaeth, mae'n gwirionedd yn ymddi'r Llywodraeth ar gwybodaeth gyd-dyn nhw'n gwybodaeth ar gwybodaeth, sy'n gwybod a'r gwybod ar y gwybodaeth ar y gwybodaeth, yn ymateb o'r ffordd ar gyfer hwn, mae'n cael ei wneud ar gyfer eich gweithngod yn y fath, On to our speaker and event chair. Chairing the event this evening, we have an award-winning author of fiction for young people, Catherine Johnson. Catherine's written over 20 books for young readers, including my daughter's favourite, Freedom, which has been described, not by my daughter, by the press, as an outstanding story of slavery from a hugely accomplished writer. Freedom is a short, pacey read bursting with action and vibrant characters who leap off the page. She's been nominated for the Carnegie Medal, as well as winning awards for historical fiction. She also writes for TV, including adapting Miranda Kaufman's Black Tudors, as well as for film, radio and video games. Her latest book, which is on sale at the bookshop, is Journey Back to Freedom, a book for young readers about the life of a louder acriano. Speaking today, we have Paterson Joseph. Ahead of this event, he suggested that I keep the introduction brief and I quote here by saying, flunked high school acted, became Chancellor of Oxford Brooks. Paterson Joseph is a highly acclaimed British stage and screen actor. He's appeared in Vigil and Noughts and Crosses and, as we were just discussing back in the green room, Casualty, which I was unaware of, Timeless, Peep Show, Law and Order and is set to play Arthur Slughworth in the forthcoming Wonka movie. As of this week, as I've mentioned, it was announced that he's been appointed Chancellor of Oxford Brooks University. He's also a brilliant writer and has dedicated a lot of his prose to exploring the life of one individual in particular, writing The One Man Play, Sancho and Active Remembrance and also the book that he's here to speak about this evening, his fantastic debut novel, The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho. Now, we're going to begin the event this evening by a reading from Paterson Joseph's new book and then we'll move on to a discussion before opening out to audience questions. But first of all, I'd like you to put your hands together to welcome on stage for the reading, Paterson Joseph. Hello. Hello everybody. Hi. Hi. Hello. Thank you for coming out on a rainy Friday night in London. Thank you. Appreciate it. It's strange you just come out and read. It feels weird. I want to say hello first so you can hear what my voice is before I start doing funny voices. I love this man. I've loved him for 20 years and finally thought it's time to tell his inner story. Everything about Sancho is public. The wonderful Gainsborough portrait, which is the first time I saw him, struck me so viscerally, how could this man be? It was the question in my head. Oh, who is this? Is this made up? Is this Hogarth saying what a black person would look like? And then I discovered his story and I was lost. So I did a play which was also public because it's a monologue. I'm being painted by Gainsborough and it starts that way. The audience watching him being painted and then I wrote a section where he's in his grocery store in Westminster talking to the customers coming in and then the hustings, which is public. And so I thought, what does he really think? What does he think about his life? And as an actor, that's what I do. Think about the inner monologue of a character. So I'm going to start the book from the beginning. I've never done this before. I've always read bits from the middle, but I'm going to start the beginning. It's a good place to start. I keep forgetting how old I am. This is a Sancho quote. If you adopt the rule of writing every evening, your remarks on the past day, it will be a kind of friendly tater-tate between you and yourself, wherein you may sometimes happily become your own monitor. And hereafter those little notes will afford you a rich fund whenever you shall be inclined to retrace past times and places. Charles Ignatius Sancho, 1729 to 1780. Prologue, 1775. 46 years old. Time away from one's diary is as valuable as a little time away from one's lover. Absence not only softens the tender feelings toward the beloved other, it also provides the benefit of perspective that renders the object of affection so much more precious and beautified. So, too, with quill, ink, and leaf, I reunite my body with my mind and the pleasure this act gives me has grown rather than diminished. For I speak and write to purpose now. I seek to lay forth a history that speaks of all the truths of my life up to this present day to survey, like the architect of my own life, the line I have followed that brought me here, my history, not chaotically rendered as in my earliest diary entries. No, as I see them now, put together to make sense of the whole, this for you, my son, William Leitch Osborne Sancho. Born last Friday, 20th day of October, exactly at half past one in the afternoon, my second son, my only living son. I will speak to you as you will be as I see you in my mind's eye when you will find these pages carefully concealed in my old room at Windsor Castle. I speak to Billy, the gentleman, the instructions for finding these will be given to you before I pass. I know with a certain knowledge that I will not live to see you at man's estate. So, here am I, addressing the man, Billy Sancho, know thy father and forgive him. I will not stint on necessary detail but have no time for flights of fantasy or anecdote not pertinent to my aim, neither, at which is no less than to render the truth of a complex web of a life, a life lived in many kingdoms, or so it seems to me presently. I'm now a shop owner. At the old enough, I gallop ahead and must grasp the reins of my memory more firmly. Much of the following comes from my diary entries over the years. I will record my retrospective interjections. These may be useful in aiding my Billy to navigate the story of your father's life thus far. This rendering may benefit older Sancho too when time has eroded precision in the recollection of even the most momentous twists and turns of a momentous life. I began writing a diary in earnest at the age of 17. Those entries will appear in these pages as I see fit. For the present, I will begin. Book one, 1729 to 1749. Chapter one in which Charles Ignatius Sancho relates his early life. 1729. Origins. I had on reflection little right to survive born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean on what is quaintly described as the middle passage. I now say a slave ship is neither in a passage nor does it navigate the middle of anywhere. It sails straight to the heart of hell. My future articulacy would have astounded my master standing a safe distance from the helpless African girl of unknown origin, a daughter of Eve from somewhere along the Guinea coast. Neither would it have occurred as a possibility to my terrified boy father traumatised by the last day's events and near paralyzed, emasculated by fear of the unknown. In contrast, his wife, my mother, is simply luckily lost in the bewildered agony of a painful breachbuff. Lucky to be together at all these child parents captured and sold as slaves, I would guess by a rival tribe's chief, the human spoils of war. Lucky, a charnal house of black flesh, this cramped and rank with rat droppings and the spillage of a thousand filthy slot buckets, filth amassed over the 15 years of this ship's barbaric life. A life spent plying its brutal unfeeling trade between the pestilential slaughterhouses of the Guinea or slave coast and the slow death of plantation life in the Americas, which awaited the cursed souls who were doomed to never return home, neither they nor their offspring, the permanently lost tribe. Let us roam, leaving the child parents to their agonies for a moment. Let us venture to the next deck down. No, not that lower mezzanine deck that one is for the picker ninies. Oh, they can really pack them in there. Conveniently small, these little ones. They hardly complain at all, but simply lie in stupified terror. All the better. Much less trouble that way. Quieter. No, we need to look at the lowest deck. We find the men's quarters quite the largest space in the ship. Rumi. Or at least it would be if 300 men were not crammed head to toe so tightly that no room can be afforded for the slightest movement without feeling the calloused skin of a stranger's feet or the tangled woolly roughness of the hair of one's neighbour pungently ripe with sweat and the acrid smell of fear. The rhythmic rolling of the ship accompanied by the groans of hundreds of men who cannot speak or understand each other's languages. Divide and rule starts early in the seasoning process. That shameless word for the conditioning for a life of slavery that the white and black traders along this treacherous coast give to the slave apprenticeship and apprenticeship that starts in earnest once the enslaved soul has reached their destination. Usually a plantation of one kind or another cotton, sugar, cane, tobacco, crops that bring ready money, commerce. Where will your cruelty end? Let us hurry back up to the birth cabin. Our young mother to be is about to bring our main subject forth past the mid-deck with the women and young girls deck. Half the area of that of the men are made more uncomfortable for them by the fact that some are in stages of pregnancy akin to our lady above who we now see has expired. There is the dumbstruck master, the surgeon charged with midwifery duties guiltily sullen, the near catatonic gaze of the frightened boy father now without a soul who knew him free. He has the fleeting notion to bolt from the room perhaps to fling himself overboard broken by the loss of his wife, his life's companion. Futile. He will be shackled below with the rest. What are the debris left in the wake of this storm of grief, the mewling, puking infant boy? Soon baptized, child's Ignatius after the father of the Jesuits and growing round and strong always round in new Granada. On arrival, Billy, when first my father, your grandfather, saw that the colour of the majority of labourers on that benighted dock matched his own. He set his eye on a dosing overseers unguarded scabbard, seized the man's sword, then swiftly slipped the blade from his own guts to his heart before any had time to register the act. He died in merciful seconds and my world contracted yet again. This, the story I have pieced together from the fragments I harvested from servant's gossip, the indiscretions of my guardians, my own meditations, my nightmares. My story is just that, a story, neither better nor worse than any enslaved orphan of Catholics. Thank you. We're going to welcome Catherine onto the stage now. Just and thank you for that. That was really moving. One thing that I forgot to mention at the very beginning is the live captions. If you're watching from home, you can click to enable them on your screen and also the music that you listened to on your way in was an actual composition of them, Sanchos, by Ben Parkes. We're performed by Ben Parkes. If you can find it at parkmusic.com. Thank you. I will leave you to the discussion. So if it's closed captioned, doesn't mean I have to speak very slowly because that's quite hard for me. Or very fast. I can do that. Thank you very much for that. It's lovely to see so many people here and about a book for which I am really passionate about its subject is almost probably as much as you are. I think that writing a novel is probably most like falling in love. So the first question I'm going to ask you is how you first met Sancho and what was it? How did you fall into the sort of pit of wanting to know more? I think the first time I met Sancho was in Gretchen Goedzenner's book Black England. And I opened that book and it was the reasons I was getting into it was probably well known by some now. I basically I went to drama school. I love the European classics. I'm really good at them. But I wasn't getting a look in. So I wanted to be in a costume drama. So I thought, I thought, you know what I could do if I found a character, no one could refute it. And they said, well darling, there were no black people in England for 1948. So therefore, you can't be in Arsha. But then if I could find a character, give it to a writer, because I didn't have the confidence to be a writer myself, then they could write the story and I could be in it. That was my deal. And that's what I thought I was going to do. So I opened Gretchen's book and they're set to me as Severus and my head is just gone like Libian Emperor of Rome comes to England to match Julius Caesar, who wasn't able to tame this filthy rock in the middle of a dirty sea. So it's the back end, I need to say something rude then, back end of the empire. You all know what I mean. And he's come to England with his two sons, Caracalla and Gaeta, and his wife, Julia Domla, who's from Syria. And they are governors of Britain. And they rebuild Hadrian's Wall. And I'm like, what world am I in? And Sancho was one of the characters in that book. I hope you've read Bernardino Veristo's book called The Emperor's Babe, which is anyway. So you fell down, you met him there and then you fell down that hole and you thought this is a character. It was a BAFTA worthy character. Yes, I'm a shallow actor at heart. It was an Olivier award-winning. I've never been nominated for any of these things, by the way. But this was the one. I mean, he apparently had some sort of speech impediment. Oh my gosh, I could really do something there. He was grossly obese, fat suit. The transformation is going to be amazing. And that was the first. One of the first things I thought about him was that his life is just ridiculously colourful. It's like some sort of strange forest gump of the 18th century. He met everybody. I was going to get on to that before we get on to that, though. So when did you first see his actual letters? Did you? The actual physical letters? Yes. I have never touched his actual physical letters. I've read the wonderful Vincent Coretta's collation of the letters, but the letters themselves, I think I might have seen one here at the library. That was what happened. The first, it's the seed into the first clip, which actually later on, but did you do research here? Did you come and do research? Yes, I did. And Ben Park, who's wonderful music you've heard. There's an album that he has. You can get in iTunes or whatever. You get your music. The first of eight minutes is just me telling Sancho's story with his music accompanying me. It's worth a listen to. And then Ben has done three or four tracks of Sancho's music. Ben went into the archives here and found that music, and that was the first time, really, that I'd seen Sancho's music. Of course, I was busy researching around the 18th century here. It was a beautiful building, and it has been a godsend for me. Can we have the first clip then? I'm so sorry. Didn't you know they were clipped? Yes, it's clipped. Aha. This is the British Library, the most amazing library in England. It's where I researched this fella. This is my new novel. It's called The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho, and Charles Ignatius Sancho was the first black man to vote in England. That would have been in 1774 and then, again, in 1780. Nick Shortyman, he was a musician. He was an actor, and he was a voter because he was a grocer in Westminster, a fascinating man with a fascinating story. Inside this place, of course, you can find his letters. You can see his actual handwriting and the handwriting of his son William, who became a publisher later in life, and his daughter, a black woman who could write in the 18th century fascinating. So, in I go, treasure hunting. We're interested in the people behind me. Who's this man? What's he doing? So, I mean, this is your first novel, okay, and it's absolutely the texture of it, the feeling of it. How did you find exploring the 18th century? What I'm trying to say is, did you find that harder than you expected, or was it just something that you fell into, just creating that world? Yeah, I mean, I've been an actor for now 33 years, and so much of the stuff that I've done has been, like I say, the European classics. So, I once was given the role of Mr Worthy in George Farka's The Recruiting Officer at the National Theatre by lovely Nicholas Heitner, and sort of they've been way back in 92, and so I'm a demon for research, and I love researching, and I love finding out strange facts, but I just love finding out about other times and seeing out the eyes of those people, and I knew quite a bit about the 18th century already, but getting into Sanchez specifically, I'd never, because I get a role, and I just look at what the author is trying to do, look who he says that person is, and find out about that life. I wasn't looking for black people in the 18th century in 1992, I just wanted to know what a landowner in Shropshire would have been like and what they would have been doing, and I feel like that was the way you ought to go when you're acting, because you're not playing your ethnicity, you're playing the character first, right? And so it wasn't, I knew about the 18th century, and I knew quite a lot around it, I've done other plays and research on it, but it was when I specifically went in to look for black British stories and work in class British stories, because the two are absolutely inextricably linked, that I began to sort of have my brain pop, and the breadth of what I saw just got wider and wider and wider. So yeah, the 18th century was an easy one, because it's the century where we changed the most as a nation. There were three, four different nations, and suddenly we got an active union in 1707, but they've got a war in the middle of that, haven't they? Practically with Scotland and the Jacobite rebellion, so it's like this time when they're trying to figure out what is a United Kingdom, and in the midst of this are all these immigrants, Irish immigrants, and Caribbean slaves and American, African American slaves, and free African Americans, black African Americans, and free Africans, and so it's a mash-up of all these different nations and then the insecurity of French revolution, American revolution in the middle of it. So as a nation, I feel like it's infinitely fascinating that period. The decisions made that we still resonate, that still resonate today, all of them, and so many of them were made in that century. So there's that general, but there's also Sancho's experience of London, and he is, I mean we know so little of his existence before he's a Londoner, he's as much a Londoner as any of us, but there's also that thing that the way he's brought up, his education, I mean yes he lives with these awful women, but he's sort of taken under the wing of the Duke of Montague, and his own personal dilemma of not knowing, not feeling black enough, and not, I'm sorry, as an expression, I felt this is something that you know it's quite universal until he discovers the black society of London. He doesn't know where he sits, he's sort of overeducated, the way he uses words, the way you put words into his mouth, it's a big thing for him isn't it, that feeling of not knowing where, it takes him a long time to sort of find his feet doesn't it. Well I mean that's the story of the novel, and that's the story that I began to tell when I wrote the novel. The play doesn't deal with that at all because it wasn't something that I was thinking about, it's only when I started doing that act of in a monologue what do you actually think about the world that I realized he's an outlier, he doesn't belong in the black community necessarily because he's highly educated, he doesn't really belong with a working class community because he's highly educated, and then he doesn't really belong in the royal circles, dukes and duchesses because he's a black man with no property, with no status whatsoever. So I wanted to deal with that, that sort of wine press that he's in, where he is being crushed on all sides, no his life hasn't been as bad as say his parents lives were, and the other people who were left in New Granada were, but he has a very specific kind of trauma that he has to deal with, and part of that trauma is identity, who am I then? Because I don't belong there, and I don't belong here, so what am I? So there is a kind of recreation of himself that he has to do, and that is really the story of him discovering that through his diaries as he gets older, who am I actually? Where do I belong? And the way he's talking to his son. I was very impressed with the structure of the book, the way you interleaved, sorry am I giving this away, the diary and the talking, the directly talking to his son, I mean through letters, and the way, the timeline, I mean did you struggle with deciding how, the thing is you told sorry I've gone wrong a bit here, I should have talked about the show you did at Wilton's before you wrote the book, which I badly missed because I do not live in London anymore, but you did a show about him first, you did that performance, that monologue, and after that why did you then feel the need to get this down into a book? I suppose I've sort of cheated on you Catherine because I told them that before you came on. It's basically, I, everything's public, the portrait is a performance, a portrait is a performance anyway always, and they particularly knew that in the 18th century, and you look at that incredible portrait, I wish you could have it come up, but you look at that incredible portrait and it is a performance, this is a valet or valet to the Duke of Montagu, who worked for the Royal Family, sure, but he's a servant and he's not painted as a servant, why do we know that? That might have been the Duke's livery perhaps, we're talking to the lovely, the descendants of the Dukes of Montagu, lovely Richard, Duke of Beculu, and trying to figure out what that livery looked like, but whatever he was wearing, which is this amazing red waistcoat and this gold braiding and the gold buttons and the dark blue frock coat and the way he's not even looking at us, he's looking off and there's a sort of sardonic kind of rise smile on his face and his hand, his working right hand, is in his waistcoat, which is a sign of a man of leisure. What's that? It's a performance of some kind, it's Gainsborough saying something about that guy and it's him saying something about himself, but that's presentation, but that's not person. Any more than this is not fully me, I'm in front of people so I'm not going to scratch myself where I normally did, you know what I mean? So that's a performance and then the letters, obviously people, a lot of people could read and so the man of the house usually or the woman of the house would read the letter out loud by the fireside, so they're also public, right? So I'm going to say all these deep dark things and it wasn't the epistolary, the letter writing art anyway, to you know, Twitter like, oh I feel terrible this morning, they don't do that, they talk around things, they imply but they never belly ache about anything and then of course there's the play and the play as I described it is also a public show. That's what the novel can do, that no other form of art can do. There's signs on a page, symbols, they go into your head and they form pictures, it's amazing, it shouldn't be, but it is. It's just a miracle and that's the best form to whisper stories into people's heads, I mean the audiobook is brilliant by the way. They wanted Idris Elba but I said no, I don't. But no I embargoed that from the beginning actually, just in case. No but that's the point to me, the point is, yes as soon as I start speaking I'm sort of if you like mitigating between your imagination and the book so I'm now, that's another performance so you're going to hear it differently, you're going to hear different, there'll be a different energy to the way you read it, different voice, you didn't imagine that voice was going to be like that. So this is the pure form, this is the get out of the way of the listener reader way of allowing a story like Oliver Twist did to me, I've got pictures of Oliver Twist, nothing to do with any film I've ever seen, I've got pictures of Debbie Copperfield, I mean pictures of Jane Eyre, I can see Grace Pool in that window, the fire, I can see her, I can feel the tension when she's in that school at the beginning and she doesn't know what's going on, everything's so dark. That's not a movie, that's in here, the movie's in here from those squiggles on a page. I think I'd say, I agree with you obviously as a writer but I do think, I do think as somebody who's sort of bought up on telly, I think the Grace Pool I see is probably from the 70s adaptation but that's another story. Oh possibly, there is a fire and that's what's in my head, I didn't get that wrong, did I? Somebody say yes, there's a fire, right? No, I want to talk about the letters because you hinted earlier that one of the things that Sancho did apart from his various jobs and you think how much time and writing the music was these letters to so many famous people of the time. Yeah, some famous people and just some mates of his but of course we pick out the shiny ones like Laurence Stern who he wrote to a couple of years before Stern died and they had a beautiful relationship which is in this book and a very important relationship and Sancho's confidence just grew I think as a writer and somebody, they weren't complaining it was a very nice thing, I don't read reviews as an actor, I haven't read reviews for about 25 years. What's the point? I don't know what you had for dinner, I don't know who you are but you said that you think this is marvellous, well you might do but I'm not sure that it was a good night, well you might think this is awful but I don't know you so I don't read them. What's the point? Of course with the book I'm like well it's done, it's done. And somebody said yes I like this and I like that, it's usually a preamble too but I didn't like so they went and then the letters, the letters they sound like they were written by somebody else, well that is it. So I was quite a glad by that, it's like yes I was trying to get into a different voice, thank you for recognising that in a negative way but that's right and then they went far too many dashes in the last part of the book after you meet Stern and I'm like okay well you haven't read Laurence Stern then because I write very linearly in comparison to Laurence Stern and the dashes are really important. Style, right? Yes that's what I was going to say. So the writing, when he wrote to these guys particularly Stern he just admired him so much that he began, you could see it in his letters to imitate the style and imitate the syntax and also the making up of words you know and that's I think is, the letters are great because they're domestic. It's what I love about Sancho is that yeah he's this big guy, he's got this big reputation, he did all these amazing things but he had a wife from the Caribbean possibly born in Whitechapel actually she was definitely baptised in Whitechapel but maybe she came from Antigua or Barbados originally and Jamaica. Well Jamaica was a generic term for the whole of Jamaica. That's because you're Jamaican. Doesn't mean that they weren't either islands like St Lucia. Thank you, hey thank you very much. But no I mean that's the amazing thing isn't it? The domesticity of what I'm thinking about a black family in London and he had nine children now we know they're growing every year they keep the Sanchinettas. The Sanchinettas are growing year by year the wonderful people at the new college of the humanities after I'd finished the book suddenly discovered two new eldest children thank you very much indeed Mary Ann Sancho and Thomas Johnson which is hilarious to some people Thomas Johnson Sancho. It's a good name and I actually I there's a school in Victoria I'm getting the subject we are going to the clip in a minute where they're they're sure that at least William went grey coats hospital in in Westminster but there's somebody trawling the records to see well I hope they find it. If any of the Sanchos were there yeah yeah but we do need to go to the second clip so you've got to look at yourself speaking there. I don't have to look at myself I can look at you looking at me what does that look like? I'm very excited to be finally able to open the first edition well actually say the first edition it was actually the second edition the first edition was printed two years after Sancho died but this is his son Billy that's his work because he was a printer and his print store would have been in Newsgate which happens to be now the National Gallery site but here we are I'm opening it up letters of the late Ignatius Sancho London published December the 20th 1802 by William Sancho Charles Street Westminster so that's interesting because it says 1802 published from the printworks at number 20 Charles Street Westminster now 20 19 in fact was the store so 19 and 20 they might have bought the store next door they must have been doing quite well then at that point but is that the printworks and then he had a bookstore in Newsgate who knows the weird thing about history is that it's not fixed that we think we know everything and then we look in an archive and we go what's this about what is this and we suddenly find a new avenue for example I thought Sancho had seven children and I find out about three months ago after 20 years of research that he had two others an elder daughter called Marianne and an elder son called Thomas Johnson you can't you can't write it anyway come on Thomas Johnson and they both of them I mean she Marianne lived to be 46 and he 54 we had their birth dates and their death dates what are these hundred years worth of living what is that somebody go find out because that information is there it's there it's got to be there I mean the the archives at the the seat of the the montague is becluse now Bowton house which is actually a beautiful place to visit in north Hamptonshire Crispin Powell is the amazing archivist there is digging and trawling through all of that but it is astonishing to me that we can have a hundred years of life of somebody and not know anything about what they did where they lived it's not it has to be out there somewhere so but they're fine go find it let me know that's the thing it's also with Equiano his children you know his daughter is in Avnie Park Cemetery in Stoke Newton but it's the thing is these people are all here and they're descendants are probably all still here it's just fantastic and amazing and I love it all um so there he was he met with back to sancho now as a person so he knew stern he knew dang he had a relationship with David Garrick as well who was the preeminent actor of his age yes there's a preface to the first letters which were printed two years after sancho died they had uh it had um the only publication that got as many subscribers before being released was the spectator so they made a lot of money so it's probably why they were able to buy these properties um uh and in the preface Joseph Jekyll and I put this as a sort of audience gag in my play the or the he says oh sancho tried his hand at acting but due to a perceived speech impediment he was unsuccessful I think yes of course that was the reason but there that that's what that that's kind of what we know and then in the book he just obsesses in the letters he obsesses with David Garrick I mean watches him apparently spent his last three shillings his last three shillings to watch Garrick playing which of the third which is like a ridiculous expenditure for a man who has no money or or means um but that's how much he loved theatre but I mean I can understand that this is it's like a recreation of life and he's trying to create his own life and it's like how do you be how do which is probably what we all do through reading stories and or um experiencing stories we're all looking for how to be yes and if you've got a forerunner a parent uh an uncle somebody nearby you can see being something that you might want to be then you can see it and you can be it the old phrase but if you have no idea there is no forerunner there's nobody who's gone ahead and done what you've done and maybe you can do a little better I mean Equiano got lucky in some ways that Sancho had made some sort of headway pushed the boundaries in some sort of way oh look black people can be I can have intelligence so Equiano I'm not saying that he jumped on the back of Sancho but he certainly was helped by that open door that wedge that Sancho has made but he Sancho had no one at all to look at I've now got to ask you about something I was sort of looking for in the book but you know obviously but the sons of Africa because he talks about the cause right from the beginning of the book Sancho is very clear about the cause and it's the his experience of of him and Anne going to the Somerset case was lovely I mean I'm sorry I know it's a horrible case James Somerset who was recaptured and it when it was Lord Mansfield took that case on before the Song and very important in beginning to change the mind of British society which I don't think thought about what was going on in the colonies you know I think there were well I don't know what do you think you don't do what I think what do you think about that kind of it's the black society and Sancho's work about the cause yeah there's a there's a sort of feeling I suppose that apart from Wilberforce coming through they would have been no big push against slavery which is it's such a an easy reading of history and if you were to look at white people who were very much the forerunners of people decrying the slave trade you got to go to the women first who were the ones who stopped drinking should having sugar in their tea when they invented the tea party and he just really been invented they decided they weren't quaker women in particular in at first they weren't going to take sugar in their tea that's quite a powerful lobby that's your wife you're coming home to your wife who's going I'm not touching this filthy stuff because I believe awful things are happening in our name remotely I mean if you think how could they not know what am I wearing yeah what am I what am I wearing where who's made this I got this at you know mns or I got this at John Lewis's or I got this in whatever store I don't know what I'm wearing who made it it was cheap enough for me to buy it um that was the same stuff that was happening but when the news properly with Africans coming back and saying this is what's going on the momentum started so James Groniosaw a guy called Otaba Gugwano and allow that equiano who we know quite a lot about started this group called the Sons of Africa which is a lobbying group against slavery but if you're looking at white people males you've got to look at people like Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharpe and his family who sacrificed their very lives to the cause and in fact Clarkson ended up founding Sierra Leone so to rescue the African Americans and their some their white wives from being persecuted by the Americans after they'd won that war of independence the British said we will the British said we will take you and we will free you if you fight for us and they did fight they lost so these people were sent to naturally Nova Scotia and died in their hundreds and so that was all four Clarkson petition the government to rescue these people they were rescued and brought to London generally who knows where some of them scattered if you if you're white and you've got 7% Saharan African DNA in your system it's probably some of these guys and ladies and then it was too much for London they wanted them out and so they um Clarkson had a fantastic idea of bringing them to Africa founding in colony I mean the idea was so beautiful because it was next to you know the land was it was it was a disaster and actually Equiano served on that committee and then he had to leave it yeah we're getting off we're getting off us no we're not we're talking about protest in the 18th century and I want to tell you that everybody was protesting who could not everybody could white people were protesting black people were protesting and the idea that it was only will before is a very thin if you like reading of that part of history yeah I think it took a long time to sort of change minds it was like a a big cultural shift um because like you said people didn't think about it I think we're going to have our third how long is this film there's we've got we've got moisi and I'm duty bound this is Billy's writing but this fascinatingly is Elizabeth's the daughter the youngest daughter um so Betsi as she was known could write not very common for women at all and her writing is uh it's just beautiful I would read it but it's very hard some of it's very hard to read I can see some things I did not then know but I should have the honour to see you in town soon to thank you and assure you it will be a very great act of charity if my rent is paid it is £12 a year so she was strapped for cash and we're talking about 18 that looks like 1812 I don't know but it's beautiful to see the ink to see the the orthography to see the handwriting to see the the movement and her little jokes here the grace of the clue the clue being part of the Montague family of course yeah I could devour this all day I feel like just reading this and being with this material feels like being with the Santianettas for the afternoon it's amazing yeah I mean it sounds it's almost idyllic because that's the other thing that you hardly ever get in black British history is that is a family a whole family it's so often the lone man a very rare woman like um Phyllis weekly was American anyway but it's such a it's sort of such a precious thing that family group and the way that he you know he touches on his family in the letter he's obviously very luxurious and very it's very attractive isn't it yeah I mean he's um he's besotted with Anne I mean besotted with him I've never read letters like it you know my my best half my other self my best self I mean he is totally in love with her from the beginning of his life to the end and I suppose the novel when I go into that it's like look I mean I'm a cynical old man so I know that love doesn't that kind of love doesn't laugh sorry kids it's true but it can go into something a bit more sorry shocking that's a spoiler but it but it go it can go into something actually rather more deep as we know and add to that an isolated black man who can find no one like him around and then he meets this angel normally I I try to contrast it sorry you just got one hit of the rather heavy stuff but there's a wonderful moment that I imagine where they first meet and they were taverns in London that were frequented by black people and that is where they met there's a brilliant guide book to London in I think it's the very it's in the 1600s and it's like the best dancers in London are the black dancers in Hoban and you know that's a travel guide and yet they never tell you when they talk about these taverns there's one guy's going down Fleet Street they're usually foreign visitors going these amazing people they say that they found a tavern in Fleet Street frequented mainly by blacks and they're negro women and I'm thinking okay so let's imagine a tavern in Fleet Street popular area to drink that there's going to be a tavern that's just got black people in it unlikely and of course they would lump Jewish people together with black people by the way because they were foreign and they were dark and swervy and Indians and Arabs and so that's what I imagine it's heaving tavern because they say they're called black frolics yeah so what are they ffrolicking to music were they playing Handel unlikely what were the instruments why don't you describe the instruments so I have him meet Anne there and sort of try and describe or imagine what that atmosphere must have been like and it's important to me to people London with these people I mean I don't just mean black people but everybody the Irish who were persecuted so much because they were considered to be papists and they were going to do what the French were doing and chop the heads off their off the monarchy you know so they were vilified too but they were solidarity there and when you read accounts of what was going on in Seven Diles very nice area now you've got you know apothecries and Neil's Yard in nice pizza shops in all of that but it was a absolute dive I nearly swore then to a controlled myself but it was and it was a no go area and yet the Irish were in there they're working poor in there and the other thing that foreign visitors would say every corner seems to have a runaway slave poster well how could every are they exaggerating but you read seven eight ten accounts like this you say no it must have been quite prevalent why because of that Somerset case that we spoke about and earlier cases where people presumed if you've got to England you would be free because there's no slavery in England by statute yet if you come from Virginia with your slave that slave is still a slave but if they ran into Seven Diles they could be rescued that's a story that needs to be told or you're writing it at the moment okay give it a plug give it a plug but it's that thing that there is the air in England is too sweet to support you know slavery it was all that the idea of what what it meant to be English or Christian you know all the stories about oh well if you were baptized yes and then you would be free and and the whole point was is that it it wasn't there was room there was some room yes you might be caught but you so you have a character of Jonathan Sill who is the sort of thief taker yes yes and the terrifying always in the background because how do you prove that if you've got no papers and somebody and they grabbed you on the street they could ship you off to work for the merchant navy or the British or the Royal navy because that's what they did press ganging as some of you would have known about but if you're black and you have no papers well you may get lucky and just be press ganged you could get shoved on to a slave ship and back to the Caribbean all to an American plantation you go very precarious terrifying can I just say something this about papers improving when I did the play in Washington DC at the Kennedy Center I opened there in 2016 I couldn't get a venue here by the way people weren't particularly interested in the story for some reason but America was very keen I did quite a tour over there before I came to Wilton's musical so I'm in the Kennedy Center and it's the it's the first morning uh thereby hangs a tale I mean who any actors out here morning show 1130 450 screaming kids you know the feeling that's how I felt I wasn't particularly happy about it but on I went managed to calm them down and it was all fine and they were brilliant in fact so when the Q&A these four African American women got up bear in mind I had written this play finished it in maybe 2010 to put it on just briefly at the at the national theatre studio just to show people and I've been told almost biosmosis that we were in a post-racist world and I was living in France at the time so I was thinking maybe I've lost touch maybe I don't know and everything's gotten over there and this is going to be an old and annoying story to people I sit in this place and these four African American women around about 75 80 years old get up and say son that isn't an old story because sancho struggles to find his papers to vote at the end of the play that isn't an old story that's happening to us today we have to find our papers to prove that we can vote that's happening today and he's they sat down and the audience erupted in applause and I was like my god this play is unfortunately relevant papers prove who you are don't we're not going to presume because of the way you look that you belong in fact they're quite the opposite yeah very precarious the 18th century and obviously beyond for black people well yeah I mean there's a lot of a lot of parallels in the economic situation um I'm quite lost now I think we'll have the fourth clip before we have the last good call a lot of yes let's have the fourth clip I just love seeing all of his dashes and exclamation marks and strange words I'm going to read the last letter why not I don't remember even reading this so I'm just going to read this out loud okay so this is the very last letter December the 7th 1782 Mr Spink Esquire December the 7th 1780 dear sir I am doubly and trebly happy that I can in some measure remove the anxiety of the best couple in the universe I set aside all thanks for where I to enter into the feelings of my heart for the past and present I should fill the sheet but you would not be pleased in good truth I have been exceeding ill my breath grew worse and the dropsy made large strides I left off medicine by consent for four or five days swelled immortally the good doctor in 80 miles distant and dr Jeb heartily puzzled through the darkness of his patient I began to feel alarm when looking into your letter I found a doctor Smith recommended by yourself I inquired his character is great but for lungs and dropsy Sir John E physician extraordinary and ordinary to his majesty is reckoned the first love his grandness even at the end I applied to him on Sunday my look at that the king's doctor and I applied to him on Sunday morning he received me like Dr N I have faith in him my poor belly is so distended that I write with pain I hope next week to write with more ease my dutiful respects await Mrs Spink and self to which Mrs Sancho begs to be joined by her loving husband and your most grateful friend Sancho and the last thing it says is Mr Sancho died December 14th so his hopes of writing it with more ease the next week didn't work out for him we're so lucky to have those lessons we're so lucky to have that his son was absolutely you know that was one of the things he was going to do I don't know you know but a printer and also the way that your book is written which although is did you have any worries about how you were going to write the story out you know technically craft I'm talking because this is your first novel and a novel I think it's a it's similar to acting in that it's fabulation but you're sitting there you're sitting down and you've got this story and you've got lots to sort of make to shape and I think you've done really brilliant job in shaping it so how did that how did that come about well I mean I am I'm a I'm a master procrastinator so I mean I started researching this in 99 it's 2022 come on I mean I should have written this at least a decade ago but I didn't want to jump into it until I the play I was researching about four years reading the letters until I put pen to paper so this was also going to obviously be something like that but the one thing that I the one thing that I I understood from what happened with the play was that I got all this information and made a story why would I start again so it was about not reinventing the wheel so the framework of the play is the framework of the book and then it took me to places that I wasn't expecting it took me to insecurities that I wasn't expecting and it took me to challenging sancho in ways that I wasn't expecting because after all yes he had a grocery store if you owned property you could vote women weren't allowed to own property therefore they didn't have to be any anti-gender laws they didn't have to be any racist laws you were never going to own property so there was no need for any fuss to be made but if you own property you could vote he owned a grocery store so he voted which is his famous thing he's the first man of african descent to vote but what is he selling so child street is now king child street on the corner of which is the foreign commonwealth office next street along is downing street this isn't some little shop in the corner of harlston you know where I grew up and will wilson greens some little brick a rack shop you know this is at the heart of the seat of power in this country that shop could not sell anything other than the goods that were demanded what were they sugar tobacco i mean cocoa rum slave goods which is why I have him say know thy father and forgive him because he wants to tell billy like a lot of fathers do no my father tried he does that you know he says who I am let me tell you a story about my life he wants him to know because things will be said he knows things will be said of him he wants billy to know why he did this and there's not an excuse it's a series of events that lead to this I don't want to make an excuse for sancho because I don't know why he did it except what I can imagine would be the reason and that's the journey of the novel and the journey of sancho and coming out of the hey I'm this person I'm presenting myself in this amazing way to what am I actually thinking and what have I done was the reason I suppose the novel is kind of the final iteration and I didn't have to I don't have to reinvent it because now I've fleshed out that play and if I ever I come to do a screen version of it I won't I mean television is a weird world you can give a book away and they'll make whatever they like so I am kind of determined to be that person who's steering that because I won't I feel like if you did Oliver Twist in a sort of funky version Bridgerton style say a couple of years after it would come out that would be the version of the Victorian era that we would remember so something has to sit and become a story that we generally all sort of know before people can mess with it so if there's going to be an iteration of it on screen I want it to be as closely linked to the play to the book as possible so that we're not telling and retelling the story which will then become fragmented and a bit vague that's the attempt with this and I hope I get close to it I was gonna ask you've just answered my question there but what I want to ask is do you think are you bitten by books now what are you writing another book is it going to be like 10 years before we get another book I love this question like this I mean this is my first like novel and people authors are talking to me like what kind of question is that it's like oh I've done this amazing movie yeah what's your next movie that you do it's like can I just have this let me enjoy this and then see and I've heard about the difficult second novel well nobody wanted the first one so that's okay I'll just carry on in the same way and nobody wants anything ever nobody's ever commissioned me to write any of the books or plays that I've written so I'm just going to do that I mean I've got a couple of people that I'm becoming one I've been obsessed with for a while and one I've just like discovered a family member's like what so I might dig into their lives and what they that'll be I don't know it might be a sort of biography I don't I'm determined never to write an autobiography that's for sure but I might extrapolate that story and make it into something but yeah I definitely will keep writing because yeah that's what I am I can't help it there you go that's what I wanted to know yeah it is a wonderful wonderful book um have we sorry I've got to look at Rebecca like this we're almost ready for questions I was going to say do there are some for sale which are brilliant and you can get and your books for sale isn't it but please have you got any questions and people in the universe as well um anybody got their hands up oh sorry it's way over there is that like a point thank you thank you so much um you haven't mentioned anything about uh sancho's own dances the ones that he published have you tried to dance any of them because we do that now there are so many there are actually people now who specialise in dancing sancho's dances which are beautiful and I'd really love to see you dancing them as well yes I'd really love to see you dance well what's interesting is we have um yes great question thank you see this is the thing when you dig into sancho's story he's so he's such a wide uh area of interest that of course I locked onto the thing that I'm most interested in which is the theatre side and the emotional family side but there are some people who are musicians so we have people like um the Chinneke orchestra who are doing the Chinneke orchestra wonderful they're doing lots of sancho bits I mean sancho's music is now out there and I first started looking there was a wonderful website by a guy called brick and carry and he was one of the few people who had anything in 1999 2000 on sancho and then um Vincent Coretta's letters but the music I've only really heard about 10 years maybe after I'd started or eight nine years after I'd started but Chris Harrison who's sitting there sorry Chris I'm name checking you uh he's doing wonderful work I mean he might even want to speak on the mic briefly about that but sancho's music is available obviously what you've heard you can get at park music and you can get on but that that is that is it's really important to me but it's not my area of expertise the uh the dance during the play I don't know anybody here who saw the play at will today go well unfortunately you probably would have been picked out straight away because I grab a member of the audience and we dance and we dance um uh you know he always has instructions it's like a sort of line dancing thing all around each gentleman turn their partner balance and rigadoon step each gentleman turn his partner the other way balance and rigadoon step these are loads of country dances I call it militantly joyful music he's in the centre of the slave trade he knows what's going on and yet he refuses to write dirgy sad heavy funerial music it's all dance music it's pop music of the day really and uh I love his music I just not the expert on his music but there are experts out there increasingly and America's court hold of it is a couple of um Chinese uh violinists who are absolutely brilliant and a violinist and a and a cellist who you can just youtube Sancho's music and you'll see an amazing array of people who are beginning to discover his music another black uh classical musicians too like uh the Chevalier de Saint-Georges who has some wonderful wonderful music out there and the extraordinary um and extraordinarily named Samuel Coleridge Taylor whose music makes me weep and even if I'd never known that he was a black man I mean I love for a that Gabriel for a is my go to classical music um and been for years but honestly uh the lyricism and the beauty of Samuel Coleridge Taylor's work has to be it's a blind and he's he's 19th century he was hugely popular in his time of course he was he's a beautiful beautiful composer um yes we oh we've got a question from the internet yeah we've got a question from home and then I'm gonna slide in and ask my own question and you might have just answered this to be honest there's a question from Catherine and so she just wants to know more about Sancho as a composer so you said it's not your area of expertise but I mean do you know much about when he first started composing or I mean anything about his his journey and yeah I mean a composer if you're a musician you're a musician as soon as you can get hold of a piece of uh you know an instrument you'll be composing and even if you haven't got an instrument you'll make things up in your head he had music dancing in his head he clearly did and that came out and there's loads and loads of his music so it was obviously prolific so he would have always been composing but 1760s which is a sort of gap era we don't really know what's happened to him for about a decade during his life the book tries to help with that but we don't know where he was but I know that by the time he met Anne in about sort of um he met Anne roughly sort of 57 maybe 58 in we imagine that's when he began uh sort of releasing his music and his music became reasonably well known and he wrote a book uh on the theory of music which is now lost they say how they know he wrote that book I don't know it may well be in the archives that it's noted and the book was dedicated to Princess Charlotte he was the Princess Royal and I think that's because you've got to have permission to be asking the royal family if you can put that in the next so obviously he was playing music for the royal family they must have known the level of skill he had and um yeah so he was he was probably a musician first before he was an actor or anything else I'm just going to ask my own question as well and so one of the most satisfying parts of research I find is finding descendants and searching or getting you know approached by the great great grandchildren are you aware of any Sancho's walking around with nine children I presume he has lots of them um if you try to find them or has anyone ever no I mean what's the extraordinary thing is yes he had all those children and there are no descendants that we know of I mean somebody I think I said this the other day at an event DM'd me on Twitter the direct message messaged me on Twitter and said oh well Jayden Sancho the footballer he's a Sancho okay okay where do you know this information from silence for about three years now so we don't know it's ridiculous that we don't know it seems bizarre that we don't know and yet we don't know they've got Francis people have found Francis Barber's descendants haven't they well Francis Barber was uh don't presume that people know this I don't sorry but Francis Barber was the heir to Samuel Fortunes, Samuel Johnson's fortune he was he was his ward he came to him from St Kitt's probably when he was about seven or eight and Samuel Johnson it was his son he really anybody who saw them that they were they were like father and son and actually he was a bit of a rebel when he was a teen and decided he wanted to go to sea which sounds and it's just a immensely risky thing for a you know a reasonable I guess well educated boy but who is black to go to sea but he did and I did that for many years and then came back and was the chief carer really for the very eccentric but obviously um sort of deeply paternal Samuel Johnson and then him and his wife Mary Suzanne sorry moved to Shropshire where Johnson was originally from so their kids are yeah they're there yeah yeah any more questions from all the lovely people yeah thank you get my steps in oh god a long way away couldn't you have shouted the you could have shouted it from there hello um the other day I was down at Milbank there's a um memorial to the the people that were transported to Australia etc and it got me thinking my granddad came from Jamaica in June 1939 lived down the road in Fitzroy street and got stuck here for obvious reasons never went back my dad came in 55 my mum came in 58 they all came with British passports um and my dad lived to the ripe old age of 102 he passed away a few years ago um but even in his last years the one thing if he came if he went to his house he would take you and show you a framed copy of his naturalization um certificate from 1980 whatever when that made us made them do that and I never really got why that was so important to him until the whole wind rush thing so talking about papers and you know nationalities blah blah blah I do wonder if people knew more British people white people knew more about their own history working class history about you know belonging they they seem to praise these statues and blah blah blah but they don't seem to know their working class history of of what it meant and how much commonality there is between immigrants and working class people do you think maybe if they knew their history more that there wouldn't be such hostility and separation when stories like this are told is it open doors to that such a great great question what an amazing story please tell your story however you do it write it even if it's just for yourself and for your family please because these get lost record your parents talking about what they know and what they remember please these things can get lost so very quickly in a generation it's gone um I just think if you are living in a family and you don't know what several of your siblings went through you don't really know your family you only know your bit you only know your story so when a member of that family pipes up and say oh can I get in on this please you've never done what do you do of course because they don't know the full story and it is incumbent on educators to educate the people of a particular country about their country all of it okay said the other day no no family therapist would say let's just not talk about that anymore can we just get on with it bury it and move on we've all forgotten it I didn't do anything it was my grandfather can we just bury this thing and carry on well you're going to say that's no therapist that I want to be with I want you to go digging and find out who's who why this person is behaving like this and why this person has this attitude to that person and it will be better if we knew not saying it would be a glorious country we'll be skipping through the fields but we would at least not be easily hostile to people who don't look like us because we'll know that there are stories there that connect us to each other and it is when I walked I must say this yeah when I walked through London I was doing a film of the the play the first iteration of the play I just cobbled some money together and some equipment and we just did that first thing and I was walking along the south bank dressed as sancho wig and all fat suit and all can you imagine the looks I was getting hello my dear oh yes oh very nice to see you all good evening hello oh my goodness and I suddenly thought I was passing st paul's we could see put st paul's on my way to the globe we were going to do something out there I was like this feels really good it feels like I've been I've gone to a time machine and I've gone I've said because sancho was that guy you know if people were on the street he would greet them if they you know you know would disrespect it him he would come back at them the famous you know smoke or fellow I saw such fellows you meet with but once in a century such ergos as you we meet with in every dirty passage proceed sirs which was noted down as a thing he said so that as I was walking along I was thinking you know what this feels good and later I think that's even why I've got red boots I bought these in like 2016 it's like I wasn't that fancy addresser but there's something about going I'm right here what do you think about that I belong here what do you think that's what it's done for me Catherine it's made me feel like this country is my country's food and I'm not even talking about the slavery and the fact that we all built this place because of the blood sweat and tears of dead ancestors Lloyds of London Barclays just google it it's about me I was born here I was born in Park Royal I didn't speak any other language until unfortunately I married a French person no it's lovely but I did I was 30 old I didn't speak any other language but but English my parents wouldn't teach me to speak quail where do I belong what do you what do you call somebody who's born in Sweden grows up in Sweden there's all their schooling it's never left Sweden till they were like 15 on a day trip to Norway comes back they're 25 years old all their schooling all their education they speak Swedish what do you call that person a swede if I said I'm English I can feel it it's a free son of Camry well what am I then I'm but I'm blob in the middle of the Atlantic I belong here I can go anywhere I like but when I come here I'm home Saint Lucia I love Saint Lucia I love Saint Lucia but you want to call me in Saint Lucia I lived in France if you ever say to a French person uh vous vien dou where are you from oh je suis britannique they laugh their heads off why because it sounds like I am britain britannique is British but it doesn't sound right so what do you have to say I'm gay je suis anglais je suis anglais I can say je suis anglais in French but I'm not allowed to go I'm English without this no I think this and that's because we don't know the story and so we don't belong anywhere so let's belong somewhere have our stories told Walter Mosley the American writer says are people that are that is not present in the fiction of their country in the literature of their country can be considered to not exist at all so if we're not in the stories how can we possibly know that we belong here we're not in the stories not included so we're not included w four letters out n word out that's all I saw in Wilson Green Halston and Kilburn when I was growing up on walls how does that make you feel I was born in park royal I lived above a shop in Wilson Green where am I supposed to go and so St Lucia was home home until I was 18 and I went what am I talking about if I go to St Lucia now I can't speak the language I don't I don't act like I'm too fast I'm too efficient I'm too I want to do and everybody's just like slow down and they can tell who you are because you're like compared to everybody else so I belong here whether I like it or not I'm an Englishman I think that's so true and that's what historical fiction I mean that's been my mission for the past four years it says this is home this is and I'm same for me I used to be so used to just say I'm a Londoner if anybody us but I've not lived in London for 10 years and I said this is what English looks like so that yes I agree it's about it's about staking our claim but it's also it's everyone's history yes it's our history it's everyone's history it's really full picture it's just a full picture absolutely sorry we're supposed to be taking questions um yes Sandra Agard lovely Catherine um congratulations Paterson thank you wonderful wonderful you're reading it just sent me it's just outstanding and congratulations Catherine on your book which I should have bought tonight so you could sign it thank you but I just want to say it's all about education yeah it's about teaching in schools it's about having your book there Catherine it's about having your book now um Paterson it's about schools it's about re-educating and getting our children and to to learn their histories and that's what we've got to do and that's what we're trying to do here at the British Library with the schools programme I have to plug it plug plug plug say that again now please yeah with the schools programme British Library that's what we're doing here and the whole and the whole learning team but it's really important that I feel that these books and I know in the origins are some other writers who write um historical books Miss Brown I know she's here she's right there shy shy shy who's written this amazing series about Betsy Santos absolutely it's about getting those books in schools and and plug in those books and yourself and other writers growing up I've born in England in London growing up the book I read as a child was Little Black Sambo hated it with passion it was the only book that reflected a black character and if I had had the all books it would have been sublime and that's what we've got through address now thank you thank you thank you so we've just we've just got time I think probably for one more question so I'll just hand the mic actually I'm going to make a statement congratulations of course um my name is Elaine I'm from Pegasus Academy Trust we're primary schools and I am proud to say that your book features heavily in our school your books freedom is right there your new book about Oledair Gwynair was in our school hero is there um race to the frozen north is there in our schools we really make a point of trying to let our children know that they have a reason to be here I remember David Olusioga saying that when he first read Peter Fryer's Stay in Power it gave him a warrant to be in this country and that I find very moving um Mr Joseph if I may when I first saw you being interviewed saying um that when you first found out about uh uh Ignatius you were so moved and you were so also so troubled that you didn't know and the passion that you showed in that I really felt that and it was actually like the inspiration both of you have been an inspiration for me to push for black and diverse histories in our schools which are in Croydon very close to uh Samuel Coleridge Taylor's uh yes um Old Horn um so I just wanted to really thank you both so much um for all the work that you have done I have at least in fact I have um at least two of your books here with me and also and also you Mr Batterstones we have Freedom which is an incredibly moving book I am my my am Freedom 1983 um and of course I have your book here with me too and hoping for you to be able to sign them of course but um I do recall I mean my parents are also from Jamaica 1959 1960 my father came on the Askania ship uh passenger 246 uh came here booted it suited and booted but nothing in his pocket but he was ready he was ready to rebuild this place and do the right thing but what I do also thank you so much um what I do also remember is one of the I can't remember which one it was but certainly one of the prime ministers of Jamaica had said listen to the stories share the stories because whenever an elder passes away it's like a library burning down and for me I am so inspired by everyone here to keep doing trying to do the right thing and teach the children um and just keep going so thank you thank you everybody everybody has a story yes white black everybody has a story and you your ancestors have stories we've got these brilliant phones now where you can just go voice recorder mum where did that granddad come from you will be amazed at what pops out of people's heads oh yeah by the way he was a circus juggler what so many people do that and lion tamer you know you don't know just ask so you know you've got to know your story you've got to know your story and they're fascinating stories out here absolutely they're all fascinating sorry yeah do not apologise it's been absolutely amazing and thank you um to the audience for such thoughtful and um revealing questions I suppose as well for honesty and candor and um to Catherine and to Patterson this has just been a wonderful event I just want to add my praise to your book Patterson um from a historian's point of view it feels like you're you're writing from the past I don't know how you've done it it feels like I'm reading an 18th century diary so well dr who and that time machine I finally used it good but um can we just give a huge round of applause to Patterson I forgot to talk about Steve for so much that I didn't say