It has been suggested that a pair of contemporary cases of interracial marriage influenced Rose when he was writing the film's script.
Peggy Cripps, an aristocratic debutante whose father had been a British cabinet minister and whose grandfather had been leader of the House of Lords, married the African anti-colonialist Nana Joe Appiah. They would establish their home in the Nana's native Ghana, where he would subsequently hold office as a minister and ambassador.
At around the same time, Lloyd's underwriter Ruth Williams and her husband, African aristocrat Kgosi Seretse Khama, were engaged in a struggle of their own. Their union, which also occurred in the immediate aftermath of World War II, led to a storm of comment that snowballed into an international incident which saw them stripped of their chiefly titles in his homeland and exiled to Britain. They would ultimately return to the Kgosi's native Botswana as its inaugural president and first lady.[9]
