ABSTRACT
The story of Seretse Khama and his wife Ruth gripped the British and international press in 1949-50, and continued to periodically excite interest until the couple left England in 1956. Seretse was the heir to the most important chieftainship in Bechuanaland (colonial Botswana), a British imperial protectorate squeezed between South Africa and Rhodesia. It was evidently pressure from those white-ruled states that induced first a Labour government and then a Conservative government to bar Seretse from succession and then to exile him in Britain. The story of Seretse helped to bring into British public consciousness an awareness of the juxtaposition of Black Africa and White Africa in the years before Ghana and apartheid hit the headlines. Seretse also lived in Britain between 1945 and 1956 - the period of increasing Caribbean immigration into Britain. To some extent, therefore, the well-publicized story of Seretse may have both reflected and helped to predispose British public opinion towards the black population of Britain itself.
