Black History Month Lecture

The tradition of having a high quality academic speaker for Black History Month, started by the Warden three years ago, and surviving the period of Covid, resumed this year on Friday 14th October. 

 

This year’s speaker was the acclaimed historian and author Colin Grant. His lecture covered his book – Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation. In introducing him, Vivian Gu (the JCR’s Faith and Ethnic Minorities Officer) spoke about the importance of the micro-world which underpinned macro-history, while Colin provided a vivid narrative to the experience of the Jamaican emigres who arrived in Britain, who learned to adapt themselves to a very different, and not always welcoming world. There were stories of pain and happiness, which brilliantly evoked the period, and demonstrated the period of oral history well told.

Colin Grant

Colin Grant is an acclaimed history and author, known for his masterful incorporation of oral history in his book, Homecoming: Voice of the Windrush Generation (2019). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Associate Fellow in the Centre for Caribbean Studies. Grant has written for the Guardian, Observer, New Statesman, TLS, London Review of Books, Granta and New York Review of Books.