Even tiny moments of freedom have their reckoning. It is that you cannot afford them.” The stifled laughter of the other staff turns to fear in an instant as she strikes him and threatens a whipping. “It’s not that the candles are expensive, Missis.

She accuses him of cheating her – it cannot be that expensive. “I’ve seen it done in London.” July’s fellow house slave Godfrey, superbly played by Lenny Henry as a man with a lifetime of suppressed rage etched in every lineament, moving slowly through his duties as if the hatred is ballast in his very bones, tells her what this will cost. “A hundred beeswax candles for the walls!” she cries. They hear them as they prepare for a madly elaborate Christmas dinner that the plantation can ill afford and that Caroline, sick of her penury, is insisting on. The house slaves have been hearing rumours that the king of England is minded to bring an end to slavery. Over the years she learns to handle Caroline (a pitch-perfect performance from Hayley Atwell, who takes her right up to the line of real monstrousness without crossing into caricature), make a good life within its awful and motherless constraints – and then, gleefully at first, embraces the upending of that life when the Christmas Rebellion begins. Central to this is rising star Tamara Lawrance, who captures all of July’s ebullience and intelligence, fiercely restrained in the capricious, violent mistress’s presence but forever straining at its bounds. The opening episode of last night’s three-part adaptation, to be screened over consecutive nights, manages the same feat, thanks to a finely whetted script from Sarah Williams (who also adapted Levy’s Small Island for television in 2009) and some outstanding work from a first-class cast.

Author of the long song