WHAT do Olaudah Equiano, Bishop Wilfred Wood, Dr O.A. Lyseight and Queen Philippa of Hainault have in common with the jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine? Not the sort of question contestants on The Weakest Link or Who Wants to be a Millionaire? would care to confront, perhaps. The answer is that they rank among the ten greatest black Britons.

Mary Seacole, the Jamaican nurse known as the other Florence Nightingale, topped the list, as decided in an online poll initiated by Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London.

Admittedly some of those in the official top ten (there are 12 of them in all, as two people share the No 2 spot and another two No 7) are more familiar. Most people will certainly have heard of Sir Bill Morris, the recently retired but still active trade union leader, Sir Trevor McDonald, ITN’s perennial newscaster, Dame Shirley Bassey, and Bernie Grant, erstwhile Labour leader of Haringey council and maverick Labour MP.

Stuart Hall, the Open University’s Emeritus Professor of Sociology, may ring a few bells, but hands up those who can put a face to Mary Prince (No 3) or, indeed, Mary Seacole? The search for Britain’s top people of colour was inspired by the BBC’s Great Britons debate last year, which did not feature a single black person in the top 100.

The website on which the black Britons’ claims for honour were set out received a million hits, and attracted 100,000 votes for an eclectic list of 100 nominations, which included characters as diverse as Emperor Septimus Severus, St George of Lydda, Naomi Campbell and Cleo Laine.

Those who interest themselves in the more colourful characters in British history are evidently an erudite bunch. Black people who emerged as popular category winners (Lenny Henry in entertainment, Daley Thompson, Lennox Lewis and Linford Christie in sport), were overtaken by those whose achievements and distinctions had hardly made their names household words.

So, for the benefit of those less well versed in the careers of the nation’s black great and good, here is a Who’s Who of the top ten African Britons.

Olaudah Equiano is credited as “the first political leader of Britain’s black community”. An activist in the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, his Life of Olaudah Equiano, the African, went through 14 editions. Bishop Wilfred Wood was Area Bishop of Croydon until 2002, and Dr Lyseight was founder of the New Testament Church of God.

Queen Philippa, consort of Edward III, mothered the Black Prince (who took his popular title not from his skin but his armour) and famously interceded for the six burghers of Calais. But the claim that she was black seems as thinly founded as the inclusion in the original list of 100 nominees of Queen Charlotte, the German princess who wed George III.

Mary Prince, an escaped slave, was the first black writer published in Britain. Mary Seacole, who astonishingly carried off the vote as greatest black Briton of all time, was the Jamaican nurse whose voluntary efforts in the Crimea were overshadowed hitherto only by the achievements of Florence Nightingale.

Sylvia Denton, president of the Royal college of Nursing, commented on Seacole’s triumph: “This is wonderful news. As a black Jamaican woman in the 19th century Mary Seacole stood up against the discrimination and prejudices she encountered. The RCN and I believe that Mary Seacole deserves a statue in London to commemorate her important place in Britain’s nursing history.”

Among those who emerged as category winners, George Bridgetower, violinist and friend of Beethoven, was preferred to latter day musicians such as Sade and Ms Dynamite, while Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson got the nod in arts and culture over the artist Chris Offili, the writer Ben Okri and the poet Benjamin Zephaniah.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Google Street View gets on its off-road bike