What's happening?

David Olusoga is a historian and TV presenter. He knows that many people have ideas about Britain's history - ideas that are often wrong. He makes television programmes explaining the real story.

His latest TV show is called Union. It is about how the United Kingdom came to be a group of four countries. Lots of people think all four countries agreed to work together. The reality is different.

Olusoga says his aim is to teach people British history in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable.

He was born in NigeriaA country in western Africa. More people live in Nigeria than in any other country in Africa. in 1970 to a White British mother and a Nigerian father. He moved to England when he was a child - where the family faced racismPrejudice or discrimination due to a person's race or ethnicity. .

Find out more

At universityWhen people leave school, they can go to university to study more and get a degree. , he chose to study history. He was proud of his Nigerian background, and of his mother's White working class background. But he also knew he had a third identityThe qualities, beliefs, personality traits, memberships of social, religious or cultural groups that make a person who they are. : Black British. But there were not many people talking about Black British history.

As an adult, he decided to tell the story of that history himself. 

In 2016, he wrote Black and British: A Forgotten History, which was then made into a TV series. It goes back as far as the first meeting of the people of Britain and the people of Africa in RomanLasting from 27BC to 476AD, the Roman Empire controlled regions around the Mediterranean in Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. times, looks at the part Britain played in the slaveSomebody who is forced to work without pay and cannot leave. trade and Olusoga's own childhood.

Yes! History has been full of war and death - and often, terribleVery bad. racism and wrongs. We have to know about it to understand the world we live in today, and make things better.

No! It is better to focusThink about one thing clearly. on the things that unite us. Nobody can change what happened in the past, so we should think about what is happening now instead.