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Our week at Historycal Roots started with a meeting in Birmingham with Garry Stewart (Recognize Black Heritage and Culture) and finished with an event celebrating the life of Cy Grant. In between we took in a trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

One member of the Historycal Roots team has to confess to not being a big fan of the V&A but the free talk exploring black representation in the European galleries covering the period from 1600 to 1815 was far more interesting than its rather dry title implied. The interest was generated in no small part by the guide, Sheba Montserrat. Sheba brought a real passion to the subject.

The V&A were clearly overwhelmed by the numbers who turned up for the tour and had to split the visitors into several groups and conjure up additional  guides. Sheba did seem to be the pick of the bunch though. She introduced us to this rather unhappy looking chap!

The Cy Grant event was hosted by the London Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell, London. It was the final event in a series celebrating his life and work. And what a life it was! He served in the RAF in WW2, qualified as a barrister, became one of the first black faces on British television, acted on stage with many of the great actors of his time, appeared in films and was a political activist (playing an integral part in setting up the Drum Centre in North London.  It was particularly pleasing to meet Cy’s widow and his children and to see his old friend Alex Pascall speaking and performing.

Historycal Roots were very pleased to attend a meeting at the Guyanese High Commission in London recently. We were there to meet the High Commissioner and to support Arthur Torrington of The Windrush Foundation. Arthur was seeking to gain the High Commissioner’s support for hosting an exhibition at the High Commission about the life and work of Cy Grant.

Cy, born in British Guiana in 1919, lived a full and varied life: flying with the RAF during World War Two; qualifying as a barrister after the war; before moving on to a career on television, in films and as a singer. He also wrote prolifically and was an activist, playing a leading role in setting up the DRUM Black Arts Centre in London.

The exhibition, ‘The Life and Times of Cy Grant’ is currently on display at Hornsey Library and will shortly be moving to The London Metroplitan Archive in Clerkenwell – well worth a visit if you are in the vicinity.

It was a real pleasure to hear David Olusoga speaking at an event in Brighton on 30th November. The event was hosted by the University of Brighton in conjunction with City Books (Brighton’s ‘largest and liveliest independent bookshop’). David is a lively and engaging speaker but, best of all, thought provoking. Anyone who has seen him on television, most recently in the BBC series ‘Black and British – a forgotten history’, will know how passionate he is about Black history. He takes a very global view and chose examples that drew out how interconnected the histories of different parts of the world are. He quoted Professor Stuart Hall: ‘we’re here because you were there’.

Afterwards David signed copies of the book that supports the series.

On the train journey home I was reminded of another recent BBC series ‘Back in time for Brixton’, which took a modern Black family and showed them what it was like to be Black in Britain from the time of the Windrush up to the present day. What struck me most forcibly about that series was the massive change that post-war immigration has brought about. Change for the better without a shadow of a doubt in my view. I genuinely wonder whether anything since the industrial revolution has changed the shape of British society in quite such a dramatic way.

This week we attended a talk given by Ray Costello at the Central Library in Manchester. Ray is a historian who has had several books published about the history of Liverpool, focusing particularly on the long established Black community there. Ray talked about the difficulties faced by anyone who is interested specifically in Black British history and then went on to talk about some specific examples drawn from his excellent book, ‘Black Tommies’. Walter Tull was long thought to be the only example of a Black officer on the Western Front during World War One, the research done by Ray and other historians recently has proved that Walter Tull was not unique. It was a fascinating talk and it was lovely to have the opportunity to chat to Ray afterwards as his work has been a real inspiration for us.

The Central Library in Manchester really is a very impressive place and was an absolute hive of activity in the early evening when we were there. It brought home to us what a tremendous resource libraries are, which made it all the sadder to read in the paper on the train coming back to London of a local authority that is planning to close sixteen of its seventeen libraries, in spite of their popularity, as a means of saving money. It’s a real shame that local authorities are being placed in an impossible position by repeated budget cuts imposed by central government.