The love story of the late Botswanan president Sir Seretse Khama and his middle-class white English wife Ruth Williams endured despite all the obstacles and outrage.
David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike are portraying the pair whose relationship became the focus of a crisis between Britain and Botswana’s neighbour South Africa, which was about to introduce apartheid.
The story tells the tale of Seretse, the Oxford-educated student prince from the British protectorate of what was then Bechuanaland who in 1948, at 27, married Ruth – a 24-year-old clerk with a Lloyd’s underwriter.
Their union was fiercely opposed by her father and Seretse’s family. He was chief in waiting of the Bamangwato tribe and had been sent to London by his uncle Tshekedi Khama to study law, after which he was to return home and marry a woman from his tribe.
The movie titled A United Kingdom will be released later this year.