Portillo’s Empire Journey

Channel 5, 9pm Michael Portillo continues his history of British colonies on a trip to Jamaica. For Britain, the Caribbean island was a source of tremendous sugar wealth, but a dark shadow lies across all these riches.

Visiting a 17th Century fort, Portillo recounts how Jamaica was taken from the Spanish with the help of pirates enlisted to the British cause, including the once notorious Henry Morgan, who became the island's respectable lieutenant governor.

Far worse, it was the evil of slavery that helped to buy the magnificent opulence Portillo finds in a plantation owner's mansion. He also meets Sister Maxine (right) from the Ratstafari community, whose elders give him a rude welcome.

Overall, he tells a story steeped in cruelty and blood, until the ending of slavery in the 19th Century and later the independence of Jamaica in 1962.