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Unsung Heroes: Black Leaders That Changed British History FT: David Olusoga

Thursday 28 October 2021

David Adetayo Olusoga OBE, a British historian, presenter and filmmaker will be introducing us to the unsung heroes of Black UK History.

David Olusoga, an award-winning writer and presenter, will be giving you a deep dive into the Black Heroes you may not have heard of. From the Lewisham Mothers to Claudia Jones, you are guaranteed to learn valuable lessons from important individuals you have not heard about before.

About David Olusoga:

David Adetayo Olusoga OBE is an award winning British historian, writer, broadcaster, presenter and film-maker. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester and has presented historical documentaries on the BBC, contributed to The One Show and The Guardian.

Olusoga began his TV career behind the camera, first as a researcher on the 1999 BBC series Western Front. Realising that black people were much less visible in the media and historically, Olusoga became a producer of history programmes after university, working from 2005 on programmes such as Namibia: Genocide and the Second Reich, The Lost Pictures of Eugene Smith and Abraham Lincoln: Saint or Sinner?

Subsequently he became a television presenter, beginning in 2014 with The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire, about the Indian, African and Asian troops who fought in the First World War, followed by several other documentaries and appearances on BBC One television’s The One Show. In 2015 it was announced that he would co-present Civilisations, a sequel to Kenneth Clark’s 1969 television documentary series Civilisation, alongside the historians Mary Beard and Simon Schama. His most recent TV series include Black and British: A Forgotten History, The World’s War, A House Through Time and the BAFTA award-winning Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners.

Also a writer, Olusoga has written stand-alone history books as well as ones to accompany his TV series. He is the author of the 2016 book Black and British: A Forgotten History, which was awarded both the Longman–History Today Trustees Award 2017 and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2017. His other books include The World’s War, which won First World War Book of the Year in 2015, The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism which he co-authored with Casper Erichsen, and Civilisations. He was also a contributor to the Oxford Companion to Black British History, and has written for The Guardian, The Observer, New Statesman and BBC History magazine; since June 2018 he has been a member of the board of the Scott Trust, which publishes The Guardian.

Olusoga was included in the 2019 and 2020 editions of the Powerlist, a ranking of the 100 most influential Black Britons, and in the 2021 edition, he made the Top 10 most influential, ranking eighth.

He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to history and to community integration. He received his medal from the Queen in January 2019.

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