Miranda Kaufmann

Writer and academic Miranda Kaufmann reveals some of the extraordinary stories about the roles played by black people in Tudor times.

Kaufmann trawled Tudor records to uncover the stories ranging from a black porter publicly whipping a white English man in a Gloucestershire manor house to the Moroccan woman baptised in a London church, and the Mauritanian diver sent by Henry VII to raise treasures from the Mary Rose. Kaufmann shows how black Tudors were present at the defining moments of the age and how they were paid wages like any other Tudor.

Kaufmann is a senior research fellow at the University of London’s Institute of Commonwealth Studies and writes for The Times, Guardian and BBC History Magazine.