Finding Ignatius Sancho’s Voice: In Conversation with Paterson Joseph, Author of The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho (In-Person)

This program is supported by the Literature Fund of the Rosenbach Museum & Library. 

Registration

• Admission is $15. 50% off for Rosenbach members, free for the Delancey Society. Not a member? Learn more.
• This is an in-person program at The Rosenbach Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email [email protected].
• Registration opens for Delancey Society members on March 2, for members on March 9, and for the general public on March 16.

Register

Description

In his acclaimed new novel, The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho, award-winning actor Paterson Joseph engages in an act of historical imagination focused on one of the most fascinating real-life characters of eighteenth-century British society: Charles Ignatius Sancho. Born on the Atlantic Ocean, in a slave ship bound for the Spanish Empire in the Americas, Sancho became a prosperous London merchant, musician, man of letters, friend of royalty and the nobility—as well as the first known person of African descent eligible to vote in British elections. In this program, Paterson Joseph will welcome us into his research and writing process before offering a dramatic reading from his novel.  

Attendees will have the opportunity to purchase autographed copies of the novel and view the Rosenbach’s copy of Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African (1803), which is the first book authored and printed by people of African descent in Great Britain and preserves elements of Sancho’s remarkable story. Other original artifacts to be shown include manuscripts from the Spanish Empire in the 1600s that document the stories of other enslaved Africans in the Americas.  

How do modern-day artists, writers, and scholars find ancestors’ voices in the historical record? How do they add in their own, creative voices, when the archive is silent? Come to the Rosenbach to explore these, and many other, critical questions. 

Meet the Speaker

Paterson Joseph is an award-winning actor who has been fascinated by Sancho for many years. He wrote and starred in the play Sancho: An Act of Remembrance in 2018, which was staged in the UK as well as the US, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. A veteran of the stage, TV, and film, Paterson has appeared at The Royal Shakespeare Company in King Lear, Troilus & Cressida, Loves Labours Lost and as Brutus in Julius Caesar. Television credits include The Leftovers HBO, Timeless NBC, Doctor Who BBC, Noughts + Crosses BBC. Films include The Beach, Aeon Flux and the upcoming Wonka. The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho is his first novel.