Paterson Joseph, a well-known theatre and screen actor, has found a new voice as a writer of historical fiction. The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho is a spry, likeable gambol through 18th-century Georgian London. It follows the real-life figure of Sancho, a young man born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic, as he navigates a mishmash of villains and good Samaritans among the boroughs of the capital. The book is a Bildungsroman, the narrative interleaved with epistolatory musings. Sancho survives racist prejudice, learns to read and write, composes music, becomes a key figure in Britain’s abolitionist movement and is finally emancipated. He was the first black Briton to vote.

While basing the narrative on Sancho’s life and experiences, Joseph has ‘performed an act of fiction on him’, using ‘logic and imagination’ to fill the gaps in the archive. This creative telling produces some lively early storylines, including Sancho’s escape from the Slave-Catcher, his deference to the proprietorial