Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice

The sensational tale of the first mixed-race girl introduced to high-society England and raised as a lady...<\/p>

The illegitimate daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy and an enslaved African woman, Dido Belle was raised by her great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, one of the most powerful men of the time and a leading opponent of slavery. When the portrait he commissioned of his two wards, Dido and her white cousin, Elizabeth, was unveiled, eighteenth-century England was shocked to see a black woman and white woman depicted as equals. Inspired by the painting, Belle<\/em> vividly brings to life this extraordinary woman caught between two worlds, and illuminates the great civil rights question of her age: the fight to end slavery.<\/p>

The feature film Belle<\/em> is produced by Damian Jones (The Iron Lady<\/em>, The History Boys<\/em>, Welcome to Sarajevo<\/em>), written by Misan Sagay, and directed by Amma Asante, and stars the extraordinary Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido Belle, Tom Wilkinson, Sam Reid, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, Tom Felton, Matthew Goode, and Emily Watson.<\/p><\/P>"