By James Ferguson ● Issue 34 (November/December 1998)
Don’t Leave Home Without It
The year was 1921. Ireland had just been partitioned. Adolf Hitler had just become head of the Nazis in Germany. The US Marines were...
By James Ferguson ● Issue 35 (January/February 1999)
More than Life or Death: CLR James’ Beyond a Boundary
It was Bill Shankley, the manager of Liverpool Football Club, who once famously said that football wasn’t really a matter of life or...
Culture, Literature, Reviews, United Kingdom
By James Ferguson ● Issue 36 (March/April 1999)
Sam Selvon: Words of Welcome
London in the post-war 1940s was a far cry from the “cool Britannia” of half a century later. Rationing was still in force, choking...
Culture, Business, People, Jamaica
By James Ferguson ● Issue 42 (March/April 2000)
Ian Randle: the accidental publisher
Let me declare an interest at this point. I know Ian Randle fairly well, have stayed at his home in Kingston, think of him as a friend as...
Culture, Literature, Arts, Haiti
By James Ferguson ● Issue 60 (March/April 2003)
The Nightmare Republic
Few novels have captured the atmosphere of a place quite as powerfully as Graham Greene’s The Comedians (1966). The place in question is...
By James Ferguson ● Issue 61 (May/June 2003)
Domino Effect
What do all Caribbean islands have in common? A shared history, perhaps? A common taste in food? Beaches and sunshine? No, much more...
Culture, Music, Arts, United Kingdom
By James Ferguson ● Issue 62 (July/August 2003)
Linton Kwesi Johnson: Revalueshanary voice
For 30 years Linton Kwesi Johnson has been Britain’s leading dub poet, though he prefers to call his verse “reggae poetry”. James...
Culture, Literature, Arts, Barbados
By James Ferguson ● Issue 62 (July/August 2003)
“Little England behind you”
How does it feel to be colonised, to be a colonial subject? Happily, few of us under the age of 50 know or will ever know, for we live in...