The unlikely meeting of Queen Victoria and a young African princess

For the historical novelist, the story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta – the daughter of an African chieftain who become the protégée of Queen Victoria – is something of a gift. Born in what is now south-west Nigeria, in 1848 she was orphaned during a civil war and taken captive by King Ghezo of Dahomey. Ghezo later “gave” her to a visiting British naval captain, Frederick Forbes, who renamed her after his ship, then took her home and presented her at court. (In her diary entry for November 9 1850, the Queen recorded the meeting thus: “She is seven years old, sharp & intelligent and speaks English…” Later, she remarked on the girl’s “little black woolly head & big earrings.”)

Victoria Princewill takes up the story when Bonetta is 17, and living with a family of former missionaries in Kent. The book takes the form of a fictional diary, in which our teenage narrator starts by giving the novelist free rein: “There is not much that is known about me. How I was born, on what date, at what time, in what room.” At the outset, Bonetta is told by one of her wards that her real name is Omoba Aina, from the fallen Oyo Empire. “You are not an aristocrat. An aristocrat is born to a noble family. You were born into royalty... The world may think you are a mere African, but you are in fact a princess.” Much of what follows is the story of Bonetta’s attempt to reconcile her existence in Victorian society with her cultural heritage.

“I have been told many times that I am a girl with too many opinions. But I am not interested in limiting my own voice,” she writes – and she finds plenty of outlets for her displeasure. “Annie wore a perpetual moue, and nobody talked to me!” she complains in one entry, while in another she blasts a rector’s wife for her “fumbling attempts to get close to me through the medium of some washerwoman who was also African”. There are some pertinent themes to do with race and equality, and plenty of fodder for debates about the legacy of the British Empire. But other than a brief timeline at the end of the book, there are few dates, and Princewill’s imagination is seldom constrained by historical nitty-gritty. Her real skill, in this highly engaging book, is to create a convincing Victorian heroine to whose emotional highs and lows any modern reader will relate.

The Diary of Sarah Forbes Bonetta: A Novel by Victoria Princewill is published by Scholastic. To order your copy for £8.99, call or visit Telegraph Bookshop