Event Type: HA

Takes Place: 22nd September 2026

Time: 7.30pm

Venue: Online

Description: What really paid for the ballgowns, portraits and country estates of Georgian Britain? Historian Miranda Kaufmann peels back the polished veneer of Britain’s heiresses to reveal fortunes forged in Caribbean slavery. Beneath the elegance of marriage markets and inheritance battles lies a darker story of exploitation, empire and human resilience. Through the lives of powerful women, and the enslaved people whose labour underpinned their wealth, Kaufmann uncovers a tangled web of scandal, ambition and survival stretching from sugar plantations to stately homes. A gripping, necessary exploration of Britain’s imperial past and its enduring legacy. Dr. Miranda Kaufmann is the author of the Wolfson History Prize and Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize-shortlisted book Black Tudors: The Untold Story (2017). She read History at Christ Church, Oxford and is now an Honorary Fellow of the University of Liverpool, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she co-convened the 'What's Happening in Black British History?' workshop series from 2014 to 2022. She served as Lead Historian for the Colonial Countryside project collaborating with National Trust houses from 2019 to 2021; and has taken her work into schools with her Teaching Black Tudors project and to the world with her Black Tudors: The Untold Story course with FutureLearn. Her second book, Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery (2025), tells the stories of nine British women who inherited people and plantations in the Caribbean.

How to book: Book via Zoom link below

Price: Free & open to all. Recordings of talk will be available to HA members.

Website: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_D6vSGy9WTgqbByubz5L3hA

Organiser: HA

Lecturer: Miranda Kaufmann