'They tell you one thing but you are not free.' London in 1802 is a dangerous place for black people, unsure of their legal status and threatened by slave catchers. Elizabeth d'Aviniere, the mixed race great-niece of the Lord Chief Justice, who had spent her childhood in his home, now fears for her own children's safety and yearns for her mother, an African-born enslaved woman. Why did she no longer write? Was she dead? Had she been recaptured?

Dangerous Freedom weaves fact with fiction to reveal 'the great deception' exercised by the powerful on the child known as Dido as seen through the eyes of the adult Elizabeth. This magnificent and radical portrayal of a known historical character adds to our understanding of a trauma that continues to exist just below the surface of contemporary life.