These freed slaves and their descendants became known as the Maroons. The Spaniards freed their slaves and then fled to Cuba. In 1655, Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables launched an attack on the Spanish-run Jamaica and made it a British colony. While the characters might not be strictly real, the setting and the historical context are very much rooted in reality. That child, Richard Ridsguard was my great grandfather.” Tamara Lawrance and Hayley Atwell star in The Long Song on the BBC (Photo: BBC) How much of it is historical fact? “We found out that my great, great-grandfather was from Gainsborough in Britain, his name was William Ridsguard and he was the attorney on the plantation and he had a child with his house keeper, just like in The Long Song. His mother was a house-keeper on a plantation called Mesopotamia and her mother was a field slave called Minnie. She also added that after writing The Long Song, she found an even deeper connection to the story: “My niece found out that my great grandfather was born a slave. “That is something that I hadn’t really understood myself in my lifetime, I know it now.” Sir Lenny Henry: Schools should teach colonial Britain’s complicity in slave trade
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