Wanstead Book Festival presents: Paterson Joseph

It’s time everyone knew the story of Charles Ignatius Sancho. In the mid-1700s, a boy born on a slave ship found his way to Georgian London and miraculously survived. The boy grew and went on to tread the boards of London’s theatres, become a composer, lead the fight to end slavery and become the very first Black person to vote in Britain. His diaries, dazzlingly made into a novel by Paterson Joseph, paint a portrait of English history that’s rarely if ever heard. Stephen Fry said it was ‘an absolutely thrilling, throat-catching wonder’. It’s an extraordinary story, hidden for three hundred years. Aside from his writing, Paterson is well known as an actor both on stage and screen, memorably playing Johnson in Peep Show.  The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho won the 2023 Christopher Bland Prize.

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