The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho
“An absolutely thrilling, throat-catching wonder of a historical novel” STEPHEN FRY
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
'A great storyteller and a fabulous actor. Well done, sir!' DAVID HAREWOOD
'Phenomenal! Highly recommended.' MALORIE BLACKMAN
'An absolutely thrilling, throat-catching wonder of a historical novel. Hugely recommended.' STEPHEN FRY
For fans of The Miniaturist and The Confessions of Frannie Langton comes this award-winning novel of illuminating historical fiction.
Meet Charles Ignatius Sancho: his extraordinary story, hidden for three hundred years, is about to be told.
I had little right to live, born on a slave ship where my parents both died. But I survived, and indeed, you might say I did more...
It's 1746 and Georgian London is not a safe place for a young Black man, especially one who has escaped slavery. After the twinkling lights in the Fleet Street coffee shops are blown out and the great houses have closed their doors for the night, Sancho must dodge slave catchers and worse. The man he hoped would help - a kindly duke who taught him to write - is dying. Sancho is desperate and utterly alone.
So how does Charles Ignatius Sancho meet the King, write and play highly acclaimed music, become the first Black person to vote in Britain and lead the fight to end slavery?
It's time for him to tell his story, one that begins on a tempestuous Atlantic Ocean, and ends at the very centre of London life. And through it all, he must ask: born amongst death, how much can you achieve in one short life?
"Utterly infectious." - The Times
The Times and Sunday Times HISTORICAL BOOK OF THE MONTH
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Paterson Joseph is an award-winning Shakespearean actor, well-known for TV roles in the likes of Peep Show, The Leftovers and Noughts + Crosses. Ignatius Sancho was an African orphan born into slavery who escaped to rise through Regency society, becoming a leading light in the abolitionist movement and the first black Briton to vote. Joseph has played this remarkable figure on stage and now fills in the gaps of his life story with a fictionalised romp through 18th-century London. It’s like a colour-corrected Dickens or Fielding novel, told by the middle-aged Sancho reflecting on his youthful escapades. We follow his informal education, through debauched gambling dens, before becoming an accomplished musician and writer. Ultimately he falls in love, starts a family and fights for the freedom of his brethren. Historical figures popping up in walk-on parts include Dr Johnson, Laurence Sterne, Thomas Gainsborough and King George II. It’s a picaresque yarn, told with wit and style. Joseph has honed his storytelling craft in his performing career and now pours it onto the page with panache. Enthralling, entertaining and often deeply affecting.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Actor and playwright Joseph draws from his one-person show, Sancho: A Remembrance, for this thoroughly engrossing portrait of a historical Englishman who escaped from slavery and made inroads with the royal court. Born to two enslaved African people crossing the Atlantic in 1729, Charles Ignatius is soon orphaned and sent to three spinster women in Greenwich, England, who name him Sancho. One day, Sancho runs away and is rescued from the clutches of the local slavecatcher by John, Second Duke of Montagu. The duke, noting Sancho's quick mind, brings him to his estate, teaches Sancho to read and write, and gives him a job as a butler. Among Sancho's accomplishments, he composes and publishes music, plays the lead in a local production of Othello, and is painted by celebrated portraitist Thomas Gainsborough. At his lowest ebb, suicidal over gambling debts and enduring painful attacks of gout, he's befriended by a supportive group of free Black Londoners, and later marries one of their daughters, a fellow abolitionist. Toward the end of his life, he buys a shop and becomes a grocer. The purchase makes him a free male landowner, and he becomes the first Black man to vote in Great Britain. Joseph channels the writing style of the day and draws on the real-life Sancho's diaries to give voice to his hero's rich interior life. Readers shouldn't miss this exhilarating and rewarding account of a man living at the cusp of world change.
