Paula Byrne

Dido Belle was the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy captain and a slave woman, adopted by the Earl of Mansfield. As Lord Chief Justice of England he would preside over the drowning of 142 slaves by a shipping company. This is the story of a family that defied convention, the legal trial that exposed the cruelties of slavery and the woman who challenged notions of race at the highest rank.

A radical look at Jane Austen as you've never seen her - as a lover of farce, comic theatre and juvenilia. Paula Byrne celebrates Britain's favourite novelist 200 years after her death and explores why her books make such awesome movies time after time.