Drama-documentary for Channel 4 about the feisty, fearless and funny Victorian heroine Mary Seacole, a 'doctress' from Jamaica who saved lives and tended the dying during the Crimean War of 1854-6.
Despite being a celebrity in Victorian England, Mary Seacole fell off the public radar for most of the Twentieth Century: but finally, in the Twenty-First, study of her achievements was made part of the National Curriculum. A public vote organised by the BBC named her the greatest black Briton of all time.
Mary Seacole has recently been the subject of a very political row as the Tories have tried to remove her - and other commoners, non-whites and progressives - from the canon of history taught in British schools, in order to make room for a more conservative view of history that favours the stories of kings and wars. But they have met with vocal opposition from all quarters, showing that Britons are unwilling to lose this exceptional woman again.
Written and directed by Sonali Fernando
