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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Aamna Mohdin Community affairs correspondent

FORGOTTEN HISTORY: Groundbreaking black british playwright to be honoured with blue plaque - The Untold Story

Michael Abbensetts – 1981 black and white photo cropped from theatre programme showing him smiling and wearing sunglasses
Michael Abbensetts ‘was the first to give black Britons a voice on TV’, said Jak Beula, who helped organise the blue plaque. Photograph: supplied

The first black British playwright to be commissioned to write a television drama series in the UK is to be honoured with a blue plaque at his former London home.

Michael Abbensetts, who was born in Guyana in 1938 and settled in Britain in 1963, was one of the first black playwrights and screenwriters to give black British actors a voice on British TV in a series that represented the lived experiences of black people in the UK.

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