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Colin Grant (author)

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Colin Grant
Born1961 (age 62–63)
Hitchin, England, UK
NationalityEnglish
Occupation(s)Writer, historian
Notable workNegro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey and His Dream of Mother Africa (2008); Bageye at the Wheel (2012)
Websitecolingrant.info

Colin Grant (born 1961, Hitchin, England) is a British writer of Jamaican origin, who is the author of several books, including a 2008 biography of Marcus Garvey entitled Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey and His Dream of Mother Africa and a 2012 memoir, Bageye at the Wheel. Grant is also a historian, Associate Fellow in the Centre for Caribbean Studies[1] and was a BBC radio producer.[2]

Biography

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Early years

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Colin Grant was born in England to Jamaican immigrant parents.[3] He grew up on a council estate in Luton, had a brother Christopher (who died from epilepsy)[4] and attended St Columba's College, St Albans.[5]

Career

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Grant joined the BBC in 1991, and has worked as a TV script editor and radio producer of arts and science programmes on Radio 4 and on the World Service. In 2009, a two-part documentary about Caribbean Voices (1943–1958) was produced by Grant.[6]

He has written and directed plays, including The Clinic, based on the lives of the photojournalists Tim Page and Don McCullin. Among several radio drama-documentaries he has written and produced are African Man of Letters: The Life of Ignatius Sancho, A Fountain of Tears: The Murder of Federico Garcia Lorca, and Move Over Charlie Brown: The Rise of Boondocks.

Grant's first book was the biography Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey and His Dream of Mother Africa (2008), described in The Jamaica Gleaner as "magisterial, meticulously researched",[7] in The Independent on Sunday as "drawing on gargantuan research",[8] and in The Guardian as "eminently readable".[9] In 2011, I & I: The Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh, and Wailer was published, a group biography, about which Lemn Sissay said: "Colin Grant has cleverly personified the birth of a nation, the birth of a religion and the birth of reggae through the lives of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer."[10] This was followed in 2012 by Bageye at the Wheel, a memoir about growing up Jamaican in Luton that was shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerley Prize.[11]

In 2016, Grant published the memoir A Smell of Burning, about which Maggie Gee wrote in The Observer: "Colin Grant's brilliant, tender book is really two books: a history of our incomplete understanding of the puzzling brain phenomenon that is epilepsy, and the story of his beloved brother Christopher."[12] It was chosen by The Sunday Times as a Book of the Year 2016.[13]

In his 2019 book, Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, which was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week,[14] "Grant collates fragments from several hundred interviews, first-hand and archival, with a cross-section of Caribbean immigrants to Britain from the 1940s and early 60s, and allows his subjects to speak for themselves in idiosyncratic statements that refuse to be co-opted into a generalized account of immigrant experience."[15]

In 2023, his memoir I'm Black So You Don't Have To Be was published, its title described by The Guardian as "a jab at the privileges of the children of the Windrush generation who, hell-bent on being accepted by British society, have left the labour of Blackness to their parents."[16]

Having left the BBC in 2018, Grant is now director of WritersMosaic, a division of the Royal Literary Fund.[17]

Personal life

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Grant lives in Brighton, where he moved to escape police harassment ("I got fed up with being stopped and searched in London by the police," he has said).[18] He lives there with Jo Alderson and their three children, Jasmine, Maya and Toby.[19]

Bibliography

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  • Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey and His Dream of Mother Africa,[20] London: Jonathan Cape, 2008; Oxford University Press, United States, 2008
  • I & I: The Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh, and Wailer,[21] London: Jonathan Cape, 2011; New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011
  • Bageye at the Wheel,[22] London: Jonathan Cape, 2012
  • A Smell of Burning: The Story of Epilepsy, London: Jonathan Cape, 2016[23][24]
  • Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, London: Jonathan Cape, 2019
  • I'm Black So You Don’t Have to Be, London: Jonathan Cape, 2023

References

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  1. ^ "Associate Fellows". www2.warwick.ac.uk. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  2. ^ "Official website". Archived from the original on 9 January 2019. Retrieved 2 June 2012.
  3. ^ "TED Speaker | Colin Grant". TED. Retrieved 26 April 2024.
  4. ^ Grant, Colin (1 June 2017). "My brother died from epilepsy. I wish he and I had understood the dangers". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  5. ^ Grant, Colin (2012). Bageye at the Wheel. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 9780224091053. OCLC 781997714.
  6. ^ "Caribbean Voices", BBC World Service, 21 July 2009 (archived page).
  7. ^ Adebajo, Adekeye (9 April 2021). "Griots of the Windrush Generation". The Gleaner. Jamaica.
  8. ^ Le Gendre, Kevin (10 February 2008). "Negro With a Hat: The rise and fall of Marcus Garvey, By Colin Grant". The Independent on Sunday.
  9. ^ Busby, Margaret (9 February 2008). "A radical enigma". The Guardian.
  10. ^ Sissay, Lemn (13 January 2011). "I & I Natural Mystics, Marley Tosh and Wailer". Lemn Sissay. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  11. ^ Parks, Carla (17 July 2013). "Colin Grant writes memoir about growing up Jamaican in Luton". Neo-Griot. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  12. ^ Gee, Maggie (21 August 2016). "A Smell of Burning: The Story of Epilepsy by Colin Grant – review". The Observer.
  13. ^ McConnachie, James (4 December 2016). "Books of the year: thought". The Sunday Times.
  14. ^ "Homecoming". BBC Radio 4.
  15. ^ Bradley, Lloyd (7 February 2020). "Relating blackness". TLS. Retrieved 26 April 2024.
  16. ^ Morris, Kadish (23 January 2023). "I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be by Colin Grant review – sharp and nuanced memoir". The Guardian.
  17. ^ Mistlin, Sasha (11 January 2023). "Interview: 'My father ruled through pain': Colin Grant on the stories behind I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be". The Guardian.
  18. ^ "'My father ruled through pain': Colin Grant on the stories behind I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be". The Guardian. 11 January 2023. Retrieved 19 January 2023.
  19. ^ "How BBC Radio Host Colin Grant Found His Passion In Life & Discusses Immigrant Parent's Expectations". I Know This Guy Podcast. 9 February 2021 – via YouTube.
  20. ^ Poe, Marshall (29 January 2013). "Colin Grant, 'Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey'". New Books in African American Studies. Archived from the original on 29 January 2013. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  21. ^ Sandhu, Sukhdev (25 May 2012). "Bageye at the Wheel by Colin Grant – review". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  22. ^ Sharp, Rob (11 May 2012). "A Page in the Life: Colin Grant". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  23. ^ Grant, Colin (2016). Smell of burning. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. ISBN 9780224101820. OCLC 930824897.
  24. ^ Grant, Colin (13 August 2016). "'I willed him to wake up': epilepsy in art – and in life". The Guardian.
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