EastEnders airs birth family revelations for George Knight in early BBC iPlayer release

EastEnders aired emotional revelations for George Knight (Colin Salmon) on Wednesday as he discovered the truth about his birth family.

The BBC One soap continued from Tuesday's episode which saw George convinced he had missed his birth mother at the trial of his adopted father Eddie Knight (Christopher Fairbank).

George had been blackmailed by Eddie into testifying in his favour at the trial in return for information on George's birth mother.

Eddie faces conviction for murdering Henry Kofi Asare - George's birth father - in a historical hate crime decades earlier.

However, George could not bring himself to lie that Eddie was not a racist villain and soon exposed him. Afterwards, Eddie revealed he never had information on George's birth mother.

Yet, George noticed a mysterious older woman (Susan Aderin) at the trial and began to feel she was his birth mother and missed his chance to meet her.

In Wednesday's episode, George asked Johnny Carter (Charlie Suff) to pull some strings to find out just who the woman was. In the end, Johnny came through and delivered George the name and number of the woman - Angela Lawal.

George made contact with Angela and she came to the Queen Vic to speak with him. Angela revealed that she was not George's birth mother and that his birth mother Margaret Abina Asare was her close friend.

Angela revealed she had been a close friend of Abina's and they had trained as nurses together, and George's mother was kind, fierce, and funny.

It was revealed that Abina had focused on her studies as a nurse when she and Henry paid for him to be fostered and couldn't talk about what had happened due to the hurt of the situation.

George tried to accept that his mother didn't want to see him but that Angela broke the tragic news that his mother had died only four months earlier after a long illness and after the discovery of his father's body.

Angela revealed that George's biological parents had been forced to return to Ghana but won an appeal to return to the UK and tried to get back their son, only for Henry to vanish - now known to have been murdered by Eddie.

Abina had written to Eddie about George and he lied that Henry had disappeared after picking up and fleeing with his son for a new life.

Until the recent discovery of Henry's body, Abina had resigned herself to never seeing her husband or eldest son again, with Angela revealing that she and Henry had conceived two younger brothers for George.

"She had so much love to give, I'm just sorry you didn't get to feel it," Angela tells George as she shows him photos of his mother and brothers.

Angela offered to get George in touch with his brothers but he resisted the idea that getting in touch would help.

Before Angela left, George asked if his mother would have liked him and she said she'd have loved him

Following this, an emotional George seemed broken by the news and walked off into the night alone.

If you have been affected by the issues in this article surrounding racism and hate crime, please visit the website Stop Hate UK for independent and confidential support to people affected by hate crime, including confidential hate crime reporting services in various parts of the UK. For more support, see BBC Action Line.

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EastEnders airs Monday to Thursday on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

Visit our dedicated EastEnders page for all the latest news, interviews and spoilers. If you’re looking for more to watch, check out our TV Guide and Streaming Guide.

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