J.T. Williams- The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries Drama and Danger Bookbuzz Blog

‘My mother says that until the lions have their own storytellers, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.’  

So begins The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries: Drama and Danger.  

How do we learn our history? How do we come to know what we think we know about the past? Who decides what is important enough to write down for future generations to read? Whose stories have been told in this way? And whose stories are missing? 

When it came to learning history at school, I often had the feeling that I was not getting the whole story. Or that I was only hearing one version. Growing up Black in Britain, of mixed heritage, I didn’t get to hear about the people who looked like me, or the people from across the globe, like my mother, for example, who came here in 1960 from Sierra Leone. 

The stories of Black people in Britain intrigue me. We have been here for centuries, yet many of our stories have been hidden for a long time. There is evidence of Black people’s lives in Georgian Britain, but I want to know how people felt. Their laughter, their struggles, their joys, and their pains. There are clues to these perspectives, but we have to fit the pieces together, like a jigsaw puzzle. The challenge of unearthing the hidden is the work of the writer, of the historian, and of the detective! We may not have all the answers, but that’s where the imagination comes in! 

The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries are based on real people who lived in eighteenth-century London. Lizzie Sancho was one of the daughters of Ignatius and Anne Sancho, who ran a tea shop together in Westminster. Ignatius was born on a ship carrying enslaved African people who had been forcibly taken from their homes and families to work in brutally punishing conditions in the Caribbean. Orphaned young, he was sold to three sisters who lived in Greenwich, London, where he lived as an enslaved servant. Eventually finding his freedom, Sancho educated himself, earnt enough money to buy a shop, became a classical composer, an Abolitionist writer, and possibly the first Black person to vote in a British parliamentary election.  

When I learned about Ignatius and Anne Sancho and their children, the Sanchonets and Sanchonettas, I just had to shine a light on their extraordinary story! 

Dido Belle was born to Maria Bell, a young African woman – previously enslaved in the Caribbean – and John Lindsay, a British naval captain. Dido was baptised in London and raised as a ‘gentlewoman’ by her Great Uncle and Great Aunt, Lord and Lady Mansfield, at Kenwood House, Hampstead. Lord Mansfield was the Lord Chief Justice, the most powerful judge in Georgian Britain. Dido was highly educated and extremely accomplished, learning French, music and horse-riding, and performing poetry for dinner guests even as a child. It is said that Dido’s handwriting was so elegant that Lord Mansfield sometimes asked her to handwrite his letters for him. Can you imagine? She would have had access to the most complex and controversial legal knowledge in the country, including key cases about the status of enslaved people in Britain. Take, for example, the case of James Somerset, who challenged his enslaver in court and claimed his freedom! 

There has long been a silence and sense of denial around Britain’s role in Transatlantic Slavery. Yet more and more evidence of its scope and scale iscoming to light. And with that, the opportunity to excavate stories of resistance. Many Black people rebelled, ran away, or wrote against slavery. Some simply endured; but all their lives had value and meaning that went far beyond what the historical documents tell us. In Lizzie and Belle, I wanted to create two powerful female characters, bold Black British girls, courageous and curious, who would forge a friendship and work together to pursue the truth, however dark, difficult, and dangerous. And, most importantly, they would tell their story from their perspective.  

Lizzie tells the story of Drama and Danger in her own voice, because as a young Black girl on the brink of teenhood, she is the one I really want us to hear from. Lizzie decides to narrate these events because she wants to be a storyteller for the lions. What she does not realise is that this is the story of a hunt. 

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