Dan Snow's History Hit - Sara Forbes Bonetta: Queen Victoria's African God-Daughter

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

By the age of just 7, Sara Forbes Bonetta had survived a West African war, lost her parents, been enslaved and finally, exchanged as a gift for a far-flung queen. When she arrived in the court of Queen Victoria in 1850, the monarch was immediately impressed by the determined, intelligent young girl. She took Sara under her wing as a royal protégée and goddaughter, setting in motion an extraordinary story of transformation and identity.Dan is joined by Joanna Brown, author of Bright Stars of Black British History, to discuss Sara's extraordinary life and what it can tell us about the British Empire.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up now for your 14-day free trial.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Sarah Forbes Bonetta was a favourite of Queen Victoria.

Victoria took a close interest in her education. She sent her and then retrieved her from various parts of the empire. She arranged a marriage to an eligible young man who'd been a naval officer for her, and she became goddaughter of Sarah's firstborn child, herself named Victoria, after Sarah's royal patron. Sarah Forbes Bonetta was important to Victoria. She was a vital part of a new vision that Victoria and her advisors had for the British Empire. A more modern vision, a more inclusive vision, one that would strengthen it and hopefully allow it to endure for generations. Because Sarah Forbes Bonetta was black.

She'd been born, we think, Aina, into a subgroup of the Yoruba ethnic clan in West Africa. She'd been orphaned when a powerful kingdom of Dahomey had invaded her homeland, killed her parents, and taken her as a slave to the court of King Gazo. From there, she'd become an offering to Queen Victoria. She was taken by the Royal Navy, introduced to the Queen, and immediately made her way into her good books. In this podcast, I talk to Joanna Brown. She writes as JT Williams. She's just written a book called

Bright Stars of Black British History. And Sarah Forbes Bonetta is among her subjects. It's a fascinating story. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Joanna, thanks for coming on the podcast. Hello, Dan. Good to be with you. Thank you very much for having me. Okay, so we are in the middle of the 19th century. me. Okay, so we are in the middle of the 19th century. So it's not the peak years of trading enslaved African people across the Atlantic. Is it still casting a shadow over West Africa? Is the trade still continuing? Absolutely. So I think it can definitely be seen as a kind of pivotal

moment. And in the context of the British role in the transatlantic slave trade, obviously, we've seen in 1807, the abolition of the slave trade, we've seen in 1834, the ending of slavery in the colonies, of course, many people are still working sort of under apprenticeship for several more years after that. But following that abolition of the trade, Britain is now looking to sort of reposition itself. And the Royal Navy have set up a squadron, the West Africa Squadron, which also comes to be known as the Preventative Squadron. And this is a fleet of ships established along the west coast of Africa to intercept any other ships from other European powers who are continuing with the trade in enslaved Africans. And those ships are intercepting

other European ships and liberating, as the term was used at the time, the Africans found on board and resettling them in Sierra Leone, which is kind of playing a pivotal role really in sort of Britain's new positioning of itself in terms of its colonial and imperial project in West Africa. It's pretty interesting that they don't make any attempts to resettle people where they might have come from, right? They're just like, don't worry, you're African, you'll be all right here. I mean, so Sierra Leone must have, the political and social and cultural complexity of Sierra Leone must have been kind of wild. Absolutely, absolutely. And actually, in terms of, for example, the founding of Freetown, the capital city, that kind of complexity that you're talking about,

that mix is very much at the heart of the settlement of that city. So we're going even further in time to the same year that sees the founding of the Society for the Affecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, where the province of freedom scheme, if you like, starts to evolve. And this is a scheme whereby the British abolitionists are working together with a botanist, in fact, called Henry Smeethman, who had spent time in Sierra Leone and starting to think about almost like a repatriation program of black Londoners who've actually been previously enslaved, but have found themselves back in London, have either come from the Caribbean with their sort of ex-masters or mistresses. Also Maroons, Jamaican Maroons, who were fugitive communities who had liberated

themselves and are taken to the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. They are also later resettled in Freetown. We also have the Nova Scotians, who are African-Americans, in fact, who have been persuaded to fight for the British on the side of the British in the American War of Independence and are offered as a reward, as it were, for their loyalty to the British. They're offered land and financial reward. So many of those people, first of all, we're finding many of them in London, but some of those promises aren't really followed through on. And what we end up with is a large population of black poor living on the streets of London. So through the setting up of the society, the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor and the scheme for the province of freedom,

we begin to see the first ship goes over to Sierra Leone in 1787. We begin to see a very sort of dedicated, systematic establishment of a new kind of centre for the colony, Free Town, actually named because this is the place now of freed ex-enslaved African people. But as you say, those people are coming originally from all along the coast of West Africa. So we've got a combination of different languages and cultures all now coming into the mix. And as Freetown evolves, we then see the evolution of the Creole people who are descendants of these four sort of key groups that I've mentioned, who have been

settled in Freetown, the Creole people. You know what, I once went to St Helena, a little island where Napoleon died in the middle of the Atlantic. And there's an extraordinary burial ground there for formerly enslaved, sort of liberated, formerly enslaved African people whose ships were intercepted. The Brits couldn't be bothered to take them back to West Africa, so they were dumped on St Helena and lived in this kind of shanty settlement. And the archaeology is fascinating. There's amazing beadwork, jewellery, things that have been hidden, because obviously everything

of value was confiscated by the slavers. And there's some amazing objects in the museum down there, And it's a really poignant connection with this period. But tell me, this period as well, in the 19th century, the interior of West Africa, because of things like malaria, navigable rivers and stuff, it's not the big area of European direct imperial control that you get later in the 19th century. People may be familiar with the big maps with all the French and British empires all over West Africa. In the interior, there are still African governed societies, aren't there? Absolutely. And those societies obviously have sort of a long and sort of very rich and complex history. And I suppose, you know, now when we think about the sort of the countries

of Africa, as we might think of them now in terms of their borders and those distinctions, Africa as we might think of them now in terms of their borders and those distinctions. Before that colonial sort of interruption, as it were, you know, Africa is a continent of many languages, I think around 8,000 languages spoken across, you know, what we now know as sort of 54 countries or 54 states. And so for centuries prior to the colonial project, we're looking at a very, very complex, very rich, sort of multi-layered set of peoples living alongside each other. Well, speaking of one of those peoples, tell me about the early life of the person that became known to history as Sarah. Tell me about her birth and upbringing. upbringing? So as far as we know, we think that the young girl, Ina, as she was called, we think, when she was born, was born around the year 1843 in a village of Okiadon. And in 1848,

when King Geizo of Dahomey invades Okiadon during those sort of wars, this girl's family, she loses her family, her family are killed, and she is taken as a captive by King Gezo and his army. And she's taken back to the court of Dahomey. And Dahomey at this point is a hugely powerful, very militaristic kingdom. King Gezo is actually trading himself in enslaved Africans. He's been doing business with the British previously, prior to the abolition in 1807, but also with other European powers. And so this little girl is taken to his court and held there in captivity. We come to know of this through the journal of Captain Frederick Forbes. And Forbes is a captain of a ship called the HMS Bonetta, one of the ships of the West Africa Squadron, sort of stationed along the West Coast.

And he is part of a delegation, an expedition to King Gizo to try and negotiate with him, to persuade him to stop trading in enslaved Africans and instead consider alternative forms of trade, alternative forms of commerce, for example, such as palm oil. And why was she taken as a captive? Why was she not sold into slavery or killed? Was she from an elite family? Was she a prize? So that's absolutely the belief. And this is something that Forbes notes in his journal. His belief is that she has been spared. And that suggests that she is perhaps from a family of noble lineage. And later on in her life, she will come to be referred to in various terms as a princess. But the specifics of the conditions, if you like, of her birth,

of her social status are somewhat unknown. But we're having to sort of draw, I suppose, on these sort of suppositions. There's another kind of reference to the fact that the tribal markings on her face indicate perhaps that, again, she was someone of high birth. So this Captain Forbes, he's British. What are we around about sort of 1850-ish at this point? what are we around about sort of 1850ish at this point? 1850 yes so I think he arrives in 1849 and it's in 1850 that these negotiations are taking place and Giza refuses ultimately you know Forbes has gone to him to ask him to stop trading in people and Giza refuses but instead kind of offers as a gift as he says from, from one monarch to another, a series of gifts that he offers to Forbes, some cloths, a keg of rum, a footstool, 10 carry shells, and a captive girl.

And this is where, again, Sarah, as she will later come to be known, sort of enters into yet another phase of her life when she's handed from one monarch onto another via Captain Forbes. Wow, it's so strange. This reminds me of the wonderful, well, the remarkable story anyway, of the young West African, we think, who ended up in Peter the Great's court, took the name Gannibal and is one of the most significant people of colour in early modern European history. But I actually shockingly didn't realise we had our own British version of this story in many ways. So this is extraordinary. Was Queen Victoria used to receiving human gifts from people?

So this is an interesting thing. It was obviously to a contemporary sort of ear, to a contemporary sensibility. This sounds like such a sort of an unusual exchange. I think it's important to sort of point out also that in the 18th century, when Britain is still at the height of the trade and enslaved people, there is a sense in which African people who are being brought to Britain almost being kept as sort of household pets. So there is one sort of argument to suggest that it might not have seemed very unusual, not just from the point of King Gazer and his own sort of practices, but it might not seem unusual from his point of view to hand over to a British person, a young child as a gift. As it happens, Forbes takes Sarah or takes Ina, I should say at this point, to Badagry, which had

been a slave port on the coast. And he takes her to the Church Missionary Society where she's actually baptised. He gives her the name Sarah Forbes Bonetta. So she's named... Yeah, because God forbid you have someone who's not a baptised Christian on a ship. I mean, that would be a catastrophe. Absolutely. And again, it's another of these turning points, I think, because it really is the beginning of the anglicisation of this young African girl. So she's named Forbes after Captain Forbes, Bonetta after the ship. She's given English clothes to wear at this point, sort of, you know, traditional Victorian dress and bonnet. And then she sails with Forbes and the crew who affectionately call her Sally

back to England. And how old is she at this point? This is now she's her second extraordinarily unfamiliar and involuntary surrounding. Yes, we imagine she's about sort of six or seven years old. My goodness. And what he actually says about her. I mean, it's interesting because whenever there are references made specifically to Sarah as a child, always references to her intelligence, to the ease with which she speaks English. She has a musical talent. So Forbes also notes in his diary that he overhears her singing to herself on the ship. And I suppose for me, that's definitely something that does make me curious about her early life with her parents. I always kind of like to reflect on what we now know and how we can sort of fold that back into our knowledge of history. I used to be a primary school teacher and I kind of think in terms of what we now know about sort of child development,

about the development of language, I think that someone who is being spoken about even after this trauma as being exceptionally intelligent and having musical talent must have had a particularly kind of perhaps very well supported education in her early life. Music would have been very much a part of her culture as a young child. And these are the ways in which we can start to perhaps kind of speculate or imagine on certain elements of her early life, given the events that she's now having to experience. But still, again, like I say, seems to demonstrate sort of this resilience. He talks about her as having sort of amiable personality, but also extreme linguistic ability. What a remarkable person she must have been. Now, he does take her back to the UK. Absolutely. And very early on, I think he has identified really the plan he has in mind for her, which is, you mentioned quite rightly, the fact of her baptism. But really,

what he has in mind for her is to be trained up as a missionary. And so he takes her to Queen Victoria. He takes her home. He writes to, via the Admiralty to Queen Victoria. In November 1850, she is presented directly to the Queen. So the Queen meets her and then notes in her own journals, in her own diaries, that she's met this little girl. Again, talks about how well the little girl speaks English. Comments very much on her physicality. There does seem to be a kind of fascination in a way with Sarah's blackness, which I guess it probably isn't out of keeping in terms of Victorian attitudes towards race at that time, sort of white English attitudes towards race at that time. But it's definitely noticeable

that each time a mention is made of her, there's often a reference either to the darkness of her skin or her hair, for example. We listened to Dan Snow's history. We're talking about Queen Victoria's favourite. More coming up. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes.

Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Can we just pause there to have a little think about a thing that you do? It's become a bit of a discourse now in certain parts of our politics which is there weren't any people of color it's all a lie there weren't any people of color in britain before windrush and this is would be evidence that because everyone goes my goodness look at that a black person obviously people they wouldn't have been super visible every day but there would have been as you say there's poor blacks living on the streets of london in the 18th century so there were people of color that there would have been, as you say, those poor blacks living on the streets of London in the 18th century. So there were people of colour that you would have experienced, right? Definitely. And I think it's important to sort of think about how we come to the sort of recognition

of who is in Britain at this time. Because I think one significant thing is that the kind of disappearance, if you like, or the invisibility is not necessarily so much about sort of who's there and who's not there, but it's actually about what's visible to us in the archives. So for example, in the 18th century, we know that say in London specifically, there was a population of at least around 20,000 black people in a population of say sort of about 600,000 people in London more broadly. And many of the records that are surfacing at the moment, baptism records, for example, parish clerks have written in the margin next to people's names, a black or an African woman or a mulatto, as they might have said for

a mixed race person at the time. And into the 19th century, we see less of those kinds of recordings. century, we see less of those kinds of recordings. And it's not until 1991 that the census invites a kind of note of ethnicity, as it were. So we really sort of have to think about how we're sort of thinking about people in the records. What we do know is that, for example, as well as England having its own black population at this time, We're also looking at a time where in terms of at a much more sort of public or high profile level, for example, African American abolitionists are also visiting Britain. So even when British slavery has been ended in the colonies, slavery in America continues until 1865. So what we're also seeing in the 1840s and 50s is figures like Frederick Douglass coming to Britain, campaigning, appearing on public stages, and speaking sort of very openly,

obviously, about trying to persuade the British government to put pressure on the United States to abolish slavery. We see evidence of this in the newspapers, extensive newspapers reports. So there's absolutely no doubt that even in the sort of public view, in the public realm, there is very much a significant Black presence and an awareness of that within Victorian society. Does she get to meet the Queen? Absolutely, yes. So she meets the Queen on a regular basis. She's taken to the palace, she spends time in the royal household. And again, on several occasions, Victoria makes a note of when Sarah is brought to see her. I should point out, though, that she's only initially in England

for a few months before the decision is made that she will actually be sent to Freetown to go to school at the female institution, which is a church missionary school, where she can start her training to become a missionary. So again, part of the British kind of plan at this point for Freetown is to position it as a base from which the missionary project, if you like, can spread. So churches are set up, a university there is set up, Forabay College and schools such as the one that Sarah is sent to herself. Still aged only around eight, she crosses the globe again on a ship to Freetown where she lives for four years. While she's there, she receives gifts from the Queen on a regular basis. She has a portrait of the Queen in her room

and while she's being educated alongside West African girls from Freetown, from various other peoples around, sort of Kru, Mende, Ebado, she is learning English arithmetic. I suppose the kind of education that would have been considered appropriate, if you like, for young women. So sewing, knitting, these kind of more domestic, if you like, kind of skills. And she actually hosts a birthday party, a tea party for 33 of the girls in honour of Queen Victoria's birthday. And I think there's something very poignant for me about that. This child who actually perhaps would have no recollection of her own birthday and no family with him to celebrate it, but celebrates the Queen's birthday in Freetown with these girls in this school. So this is kind of, it's making my head hurt. And it's such an interesting 19th century imperial story because in some ways she has returned to a region of the world from which she was plucked, but she's actually receiving a British education. She is celebrating British hierarchy and the Queen and birthdays.

To what extent would a geographical relocation to vaguely near where she came from be a reconnection with African heritage? Or in fact, is she just living in a kind of colonial world? a reconnection with African heritage? Or in fact, is she just living in a kind of colonial world? So that's a really interesting question. And again, I think it's something that we can kind of reflect on. And it's really sort of hard to know. One of the sort of key things, I guess, about Sarah's story is that we have access to so little in terms of her own words. There are some letters that a historian has found found a cache of letters that Sarah was writing to sort of guardians, if you like, in England. But it's really sort of hard to know, I suppose, exactly what her sort of internal thoughts were on that. However, while she is

in Freetown, Gazo is still making raids on nearby towns and villages and certainly sort of not far down the coast. And we're not entirely sure exactly why, but after Sarah has been in Freetown for four years, she's very suddenly recalled by the Queen, by Her Majesty's command, back to England. So at the age of 12, she comes back to England. Captain Forbes, in the meantime, has passed away. And so Sarah is then sent to live with a family called the Sherns in Gillingham in Kent. And that is her next kind of place of settlement. And it does seem from her letters that she genuinely does come to think of them as family.

She actually refers to Mrs. Shern repeatedly as Mama. And she lives with them for several years. She continues her education alongside their seven children until Queen Victoria starts to develop the idea that perhaps it's time for Sarah to consider marrying. Wow, this woman's life is truly remarkable. And who would make a suitable partner for a young, highly educated, well-connected woman, but of African origin? So that's a really good question. And ultimately, the man who puts himself forward, James Pinson Laboulot Davis, is a highly educated, highly accomplished young man of West African origin too. He's a Yoruba man. We believe that his parents were amongst the liberated Africans, as they were known. He actually becomes a young lieutenant in

the West Africa squadron himself. He's also an entrepreneur trading in palm oil. And through a connection with a West African bishop, Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther, whose daughter was at school with Sarah at the female institution in Freetown, James comes to know of Sarah and makes a proposal of marriage to her. Initially, she's very reluctant. She's hesitant. He's older than her. He's a widow. And there is a suggestion that perhaps she's perhaps holding out for somebody else. She does make a reference in a letter to having a preference for another. That's something that's not really sort of been dug down into, but it's definitely something I'm curious about. However, the Queen wills it to be so. And ultimately, this is what happens. And

Sarah sort of relents. And in August 1862, the two are married. James Pinson Laboulie Davis and Sarah Forbes Bonetta are married in St. Nicholas's Church in Brighton. Sarah has been moved from the Shearn family in Gillingham to live with a couple of elderly women in Brighton by this point. And so it's in Brighton that the wedding takes place. It's extensively covered in the press. And actually, when I was writing up Sarah's life story for my book, one of the sort of images that really sort of came into mind that I thought I really wanted to see, it's an illustrated collection that I've written. But one of the images was one of this wedding party featuring both African ladies and white gentlemen and white ladies and African gentlemen,

as was reported in the press. And so we have this sort of very sort of mixed wedding reception party. Sarah wreathed in orange blossoms with her groom, who she eventually actually comes to love after, you know, this really sort of arranged marriage, a marriage that's been arranged by the Queen. The couple return to London, they go back to Bloomsbury. And it's at this moment, where again, they enter the archive in a new way. So the couple go and have their photographs taken by a very sort of up and coming French aristocratic portrait photographer called Camille Sylvie. And some of the most compelling records, I think that we have of Sarah are these absolutely stunning photographs of her and her husband, very formal photographs and cult de visite style photographs that are taken of the

couple at this time. Before we leave Queen Victoria for good, what's she playing at here? Is this, she just has a personal interest in its family and affection for her? Or is this part of her trying to build a sort of new imperial elite? You know, she famously has people attend her personally from her South Asian empire. Is there a kind of a creep towards here of realising that Britain is ruling over this vast multi-ethnic, multi-confessional empire and saying we have to absorb, bring in people of colour, people of different outlooks and faiths if it's going to endure. Is there politics going on here, do you think? Definitely, I think so. When we think about all these different sort of elements of the idea of sort of civilisation, culture, commerce

and Christianity, there is a sense in which Sarah sort of comes to embody all of these ideas in terms of her sort of her accomplishments as a pianist, a singer, an educated woman. And I say this, again, sort of very much sort of with a reminder in my mind that when I think of her as an educated woman, for me, that education begins long before her encounter with the English. You know, that propensity for learning, for language is something that clearly has been instilled before she ever meets Captain Forbes. But I think she's made to represent the ways in which Victoria is now trying to sort of reposition how Britain is seen and how Britain's relationship with the colonies is seen. James, as I say, is a trader. So as Britain is moving away from the trade in enslaved Africans

and towards alternative forms of trade with Africa, James is perfectly positioned, I think, in that sense. And therefore, the marriage has this very political sort of context around it in terms of why James and Sarah are married. However, they do move back to West Africa together, yet more transatlantic travel after their marriage. Sarah goes back to work as a teacher in the school at the female institution where she herself was educated. And again, this is part of the Christianising project. So yet another sort of player and Reverend Venn, who I hadn't mentioned earlier, but who was sort of key in setting up Sarah at the female institution.

He was, you know, very, very sort of pro-abolition, but believed very strongly that if this kind of project of the Christianisation of West Africa was really to take hold, it was important to involve West Africans directly in that project and educate them as missionaries to do that work amongst their own people, as it were. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.

Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. History's Heroes, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm just loving the fact that when there's a kind of modern debate, a modern culture war, a little front in the culture war around people of colour being kind of platformed on national broadcasters or in politics and elsewhere, in business, and that's what Queen Victoria is doing in the mid-19th century. She seems to be trying to, well, she's platforming this group of Africans as part of this new imperial identity. That certainly seems to be the case in terms of where she's coming from. And I think what's kind of interesting is also trying to think about

Sarah's own sort of agency and James too, like how do they sort of work with this? agency and James too, like how do they sort of work with this? They return to West Africa, James continues to trade in Lagos, they end up having children. So Sarah gives birth to a daughter who she calls Victoria. She writes the Queen and asks for permission to call her Victoria. And Victoria is baptised in Badagry, actually, I think, where Sarah herself was baptised. They go on to have two more children, Stella and Arthur. But Sarah's health actually takes a turn at this point. You know, she had been troubled since childhood, actually, with a cough, which the Queen's own doctor, Dr Brown, had suggested was stress-related, actually. But she suffers from tuberculosis at this point, and it's decided that she will move to Funchal in Madeira in the hope that the climate will alleviate her health. In the meantime,

the Queen has taken, again, a renewed interest in Victoria. And Victoria, the daughter, as in Sarah and James's daughter, is officially Queen Victoria's goddaughter. Sarah is not, for example, an official goddaughter. She's a protege of the Queen. She was a ward of the Queen, but she wasn't her goddaughter. But Victoria is, in fact, Queen Victoria's goddaughter. And Queen Victoria pays for Victoria to be educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College, for example. And so this family connection, as it were, does continue. Sarah doesn't recover from this bout of tuberculosis, and she dies infantile in Madeira, where she is in fact buried.

What an extraordinary story. What do we think they felt about being, well, really important players in the creation of this new idea of empire, not just an exploitative kind of commercial British empire of the 18th century, but an empire that they hoped would endure, that could become a multicultural, perhaps a melting pot, a kind of global. a kind of global, there were voices in the 19th century saying Britain needed to change its empire and to kind of somehow become a kind of global nation state. They call their daughter Victoria. Do we have any clues what they must have thought about being part of that process? I mean, I imagine that there's a combination of feelings there. And again, I think it's, I often think about how we're coming to the information we're coming to. So obviously, the letters that have come into the public realm are letters between Sarah, for example, and either Queen Victoria or the people around her. So what she's able to say in those spaces obviously is limited, I suppose, to a certain extent or needs to fulfil a certain

purpose. The conversations that might be taking place when Sarah is in Freetown or in Lagos, for example, with her husband, those might be different conversations. And I think in terms of really sort of knowing, I mean, it feels as though there are these multiple identities that Sarah is having to negotiate. And actually I should point out at this point, actually, because this is the moment where she really makes her mark in quite a subtle, but I think very powerful way, is in that wedding ceremony, when she signs her name in the marriage register, she signs Ina Sarah Forbes Bonetta. And this is her asserting her African name, her Yoruba name, in the archive. And again, we only have these kind

of archival records, if you like, to sort of rely on. And then we're having to sort of piece together her story, I guess, from so many fragments. But that feels like a really powerful moment where she makes that mark, she writes her name, and she makes sure that the first word, the first name on that register is the name that she was born with. Amazing. Very interesting indeed. Tell us, you've written a whole book about these remarkable people. Just quickly let the audience know just some of the other people that you have come across in the book. Yes. So I've written a book called Bright Stars of Black British History. It's sort of aimed at a younger audience, but I'd say like a family audience as well, really.

I kind of feel as though I imagine sort of, you know, people reading this book with their children. It's also highly illustrated. And there are just so many figures, I feel, we just have not yet really sort of heard their stories out in the public realm. So, for example, Walter Tull, the young man who was, you know, grew up in care, you know, grew up in a care home in Bethnal Green and went on to become a national football hero and to fight in the First World War.

I've also spoken about Evelyn Dove, the extraordinary Black British cabaret singer who, again, sort of shared this kind of entanglement. Her father was a Sierra Leonean barrister and her mother was an English woman so we have this again this mixed family living in Hove at the turn of the century you know she was born in 1902 so at the turn of the century and Evelyn I wanted to write about because she's actually relative of. It turns out she was my great aunt, the first Black woman to sing on BBC radio during the Second World War. We also have figures like Ignatius Sancho, the abolitionist and writer. I've spoken about Mary Prince, who walked out on her enslavers in London. She actually sort of left and sort of petitioned Parliament for her freedom. Having been enslaved in Antigua, in Bermuda, she petitioned Parliament for her freedom and walked out in this very kind of powerful act of self-assertion. King Henry VII and King Henry VIII, all the way up to Claudia Jones, the Trinidadian Marxist

journalist who brought Caribbean Carnival to the streets of London. Brilliant. Well, tell everyone what it's called again. Bright Stars of Black British History. Well, thank you very much for coming on the podcast to tell us all about the life of this very remarkable woman. Thank you so much for having me, Dan. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon

who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.