Talking Black Tudors, Drake and Elizabeth I with Alice Roberts for Channel 4's Britain's Most Historic Towns: Elizabethan Plymouth episode!

With Professor Alice Roberts at Buckland Abbey in February 2020

Long, long ago, BC (Before Coronavirus), I travelled to Plymouth to be interviewed by Professor Alice Roberts for Channel 4's Britain's Most Historic Towns episode, Elizabethan Plymouth. This is airing tomorrow (Saturday 28th November 2020) night at 8.30pm on Channel 4, and will be available to watch online afterwards here. I was in the city for two days, but have no idea how much and which parts of the footage filmed will make the final cut!

​We were mostly talking about Sir Francis Drake, as well as the wider geopolitical context of the Elizabethan era, but I did my best to get some Black Tudors stories in there. Besides Diego, who brokered Drake's alliance with the Panama Maroons in 1573 and sailed (but sadly died) on his circumnavigation voyage 1577-1580; Maria, the woman he captured from the Spanish but then abandoned heavily pregnant on an Indonesian island; and the other Africans that sailed with him, there were also a number of other Africans living in Elizabethan Plymouth, whose baptisms and burials are listed in the registers of St. Andrew's Church, which it was exciting to set foot in for the first time! (You can read all about them in Chapter 3 of Black Tudors, and the recently added entry on Diego in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

We filmed at the Royal Citadel, which is on the site of an earlier fort built by Drake in the 1590s, where it was a challenge to try to summarise the challenges facing Elizabeth I when she came to the throne in 1558 in less than a minute, on  a very windy and wet citadel wall (lucky I wore my raincoat and wellies). The next day, we headed to Buckland Abbey, near Yelverton, about 20 mins drive north of the city, which Drake purchased in 1581, having stolen a fortune from the Spanish on his voyage round the world.

Admiring the Great Hall at Buckland Abbey

I had already visited Buckland as part of my work with the Colonial Countryside project, which led to Diego and Maria featuring in their World Encompassed exhibition in 2018. I'm excited to read the creative writing by Ayanna Gillian Lloyd and local schoolchildren inspired by this story that will be published next year as part of the project. I hadn't been able to visit the exhibition at the time, so it was fantastic to see the mid 20th century Pym mural which depicts Drake's route round the world-and Alice very kindly made this little video of me telling the story of the voyage through a Black Tudors lens:

Anyway, I hope you're able to tune in  tomorrow (Saturday 28th November 2020) night at 8.30pm on Channel 4, or are able to watch online afterwards here. Would love to hear your thoughts on the programme so do comment below, or get involved on Twitter @MirandaKaufmann #HistoricTowns, where I will be live-tweeting during the episode!