FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (8) - DAVID OLUSOGA (2020) 'BLACK AND BRITISH - A SHORT, ESSENTIAL HISTORY'

     David Olusoga is a British-Nigerian historian and broadcaster whose professorship is at the University of Manchester. In 2019 he was awarded the OBE for services to history and community integration. 

In this book of over 200 pages, David Olusoga has achieved what he set out to do: he has written for a readership of children the history of Black people in Britain. The version for adults had already been published to acclaim; now there is a text for younger readers - and any adult such as myself who has not read the earlier work can get so much from reading this book with its short, straightforward sentences and unearthed details. 

Professor David Olusoga - New York Times photo

I will shape this blogpost around ten points that I discovered for the first time in reading Black and

MY LATEST BOOK: 'MINE TO DIE' HAS A DAY OUT IN TRURO

 I'm writing this blogpost on Sunday morning, 3rd March, in my study looking out on the scaffolding that appeared on Friday. Yesterday, Roofing Legacy took the roof off our home as part of a masterplan to stop the leakage of water through the ceilings of my study and the landing when the heavy rains come and the wind is blowing in a certain direction. Hopefully, no more need for buckets now. Today, they are due to put the roof back on with new tiles.

Scaffolding for the roofers 

All this roofing kerfuffle has delayed the production of this blog. My day out in Truro was last Tuesday, 27th February, and when I got home I knew I wanted to write about the day. My personal copies of Mine to Die arrived on Wednesday and the book has been very much in my thoughts. The week before, I had visited the only bookshop left in St Ives to see if they were interested in stocking my latest work whose official publication date is 28 May 2024. I showed the two women on the front desk the flyer of the front and back covers (image below) and was thrilled when one of them exclaimed: 'How extraordinary! I was looking at that image only a couple of hours ago'. She had already ordered a copy after seeing details on