“Picture the scene. The year is 1855. The war in Crimea has been raging unabated for two years.

For each one of those desperate, battle-weary fellows there’s not enough food, precious few medical supplies and everywhere you look the cold, bitter winter is biting hard.

The hard-pressed nurses are doing an incredible job but the military hospitals are miles from the battlefield.

When help arrives, it comes in the mostly unlikely form. Me. Mary Seacole. Or ‘Mother Seacole’ as those poor soldiers come to know me.

Using my own funds and the help of my friend Thomas Day, a relative of my late beloved husband Edwin, I set up a place to revive and comfort injured soldiers, which, to remind them of home, we called the British Hotel.

Here, we provided all we could.

Home-cooked food, much needed shelter and a place where I could care for the sick and wounded, using many of the skills I learned from my doctress mother in Jamaica.

The grateful words and smiles which rewarded me for binding up a wound or giving a cooling drink was a pleasure worth risking life for at any time.

War, like death, is a great leveller and mutual suffering and endurance had made us all friends.

Something we remained long after the final bullet was fired.”