Stanley Williams, angst-ridden banker and boffin, wonders whether there's more to life than his daily nine-to-five grind. One night he's dragged to a disco at Piccadilly Circus and there he meets Jessie: artiste, motormouth, ducker and diver. She swoops Stanley out of his soulless life and off on a rollercoaster road trip across Europe, bringing him face to face with a host of forgotten luminaries from the rich mix of black European history and literature.

Imagine if the Transatlantic slave trade was reversed. Imagine Africans the masters and Europeans their slaves. Now meet young Doris, living in a sleepy English cottage. One day she is kidnapped and put aboard a slave ship bound for the New World.

Londinium, AD 211. Zuleika is a modern girl living in an ancient world. Shes a back-alley firecracker, a scruffy Nubian babe with tangled hair and bare feet - and shes just been married off a fat old Roman. Life as a teenage bride is no joke but Zeeks is a born survivor. She knows this city like the back of her hand: its slave girls and drag queens, its shining villas and rotting slums. She knows how to get by. Until one day she catches the eye of the most powerful man on earth, the Roman Emperor, and her trouble really starts...

Silver-tongued and merry-eyed, this is a story in song and...