Belle: the true story behind the movie: The True Story of Dido Belle

In one of the most famous portraits in the world, a pretty girl is seated in the grounds of Kenwood House, a visition of aristocratic refinement. But the eye is drawn to the beautiful woman on her right. Pointing at her own cheek, she playfully acknowledges her remarkable position in eighteenth-century society. For Dido Belle was the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy captain and a slave woman, and had been adopted by the Earl of Mansfield. As Lord Chief Justice of England, Mansfield would preside over the notorious Zong case, the drowning of 132 slaves by an unscrupulous shipping company. his ruling proovided the legal underpinning to the abolition of slavery in Britain.

From the privileged yet unequal lives of Dido and her cousin Elizabeth, to the horrific treatment of African slaves, Paula Byrne - the bestselling author of The Real Jane Austen - vividly narrates 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.