Season five of the highly-acclaimed BBC One drama hit our screens on Sunday evening with the addition of Army Colonel Ned Despard and his wife Kitty. Despard plays Poldark's (Aidan Turner) former Army Colonel, who gets locked up in prison and get his wife to call on his old friend for help in his hour of need. Edward Despard was a high-ranking British Army colonel who would go on to befriend Lord Nelson and marry a former slave from Jamaica, before being arrested for treason and being sentenced to death for a plot to kill King George III. He joined the British Army aged 15 before climbing the ranks, later being stationed in Central America and the Caribbean in the late eighteenth century. Ned Despard was born in Ireland in 1751 and joined the British Army at the tender age of 15.

Source: Daily Mail July 17, 2019 14:57 UTC