BIOGRAPHY
Tomiwa Owolade
CLR James
A Life Beyond the Boundaries
by John L Williams
Constable £25 pp496The only people likely to
know of CLR James today are
those interested in cricket
and/or 20th-century radical
politics. His book on the
Haitian Revolution, The Black
Jacobins, popularised the first
successful slave revolt in
history. Beyond a Boundary,
meanwhile, is widely
considered to be one of the
greatest books on cricket.
But the Trinidadian writer
deserves far wider recognition:
he was a short-story writer,
novelist, historian, playwright,
political activist and journalist.
He loved both Trotsky and
Shakespeare, Marx and
Mozart. His favourite book
was Vanity Fair by William
Makepeace Thackeray. When
he died, in 1989, the Times
called him the Black Plato.
John L Williams’s exciting
and briskly written biography,
CLR James: A Life Beyond the
Boundaries, offers the perfect
introduction to this titan of
20th-century politics and
culture. Cyril Lionel Robert
James — Nello to his friends
and family — was born on the
island of Trinidad in the final
month of Queen Victoria’s
reign in 1901, and died in
Brixton, in 1989, in the
closing phase of Thatcher’s
England. His parents were
part of the rising black
professional middle class; his
father was an elementary
school head teacher.
James won a scholarship to
Queen’s Royal College, a school
modelled on the British public
school, when he was just nine,
while most students took the
scholarship exam when they
were 11. He was “officially the
brightest boy on the island”.
In school, though, he read
what he wanted to read rather
than following the school
curriculum. He preferred
playing cricket to studying
and failed the HigherWhile in Britain, during the
1930s, he joined Labour’s
more radical rival, the
Independent Labour Party,
and spoke out against the
invasion of Abyssinia by
Mussolini’s fascist Italy in- He moved to America in
1938, where he got involved
with a host of Trotskyist
organisations, such as the
Socialist Workers Party.
Remarkably he met Trotsky,
in April 1939 in Mexico.
In 1945 James founded a
splinter movement alongside
Raya Dunayevskaya, a former
secretary of Trotsky, and an
activist named Grace Lee.
Unlike many other radical
movements, which paid
insufficient attention to the
issue of race, James’s group
asserted that the struggle of
black people in America
against racism could ignite a
wider socialist revolution.
After 15 years in America,
during which he got married
to an author called Constance
Webb, with whom he had a
son and from whom he later
separated, he moved back to
Britain in 1953: his request to
gain American citizenship
was rejected. During the next
few decades he travelled
regularly to Trinidad, where a
former student of his, Eric
Williams, would become the
first prime minister of an
independent Trinidad and
Tobago in 1962.
Politics was crucial to
James, but he never allowed
himself to be consumed by it.
He had wider and deeper
interests. Race exercised his
mind, but he didn’t allow his
racial identity to define him.
As the author puts it: “He was
a man who knew where he
came from, but refused to be
defined by it.”
James spent his final
months in a small apartment
in Brixton, rereading King
Lear and relistening to
Mozart. When Edward Said,
author of Orientalism, visited
him, James wanted to discuss
Said’s career as a concert
pianist rather than politics.
As Williams’s valuable book
illustrates, James was one of
the most cultured men of the
past century. c
to France to research the
leader of the Haitian
revolution, Toussaint
Louverture. He turned this
research first into a play,
which starred the legendary
actor and singer Paul Robeson
in the leading role, and then
into a book published in 1938:
his classic The Black Jacobins.
This book emphasised that
history was not made by great
men but by the collective
action of people — and that
the values of equality and
liberty, which inspired the
French revolution, equally
applied to the slaves in a
colony of France.GETTY IMAGESRevolutionary CLR James speaks in Trafalgar Square in 1935Certificate Exam, which
would have allowed him to
study at a British university.
Stuck in Trinidad, he
became a teacher and
short-story writer instead.
But in 1932 a wonderful
opportunity arose to move to
Britain and help the famous
Trinidadian cricketer Learie
Constantine to write a book
about cricket. Off James went.
He first stayed for a week in
Bloomsbury, visiting museums
and bookshops, and meeting
students and intellectuals at
late-night cafés. And then the
budding bohemian moved
north to the Lancashire mill
town of Nelson, where
Constantine lived and played,
and where James was
introduced to the work of
the Marxist revolutionary
politician and intellectual
Leon Trotsky.
In 1933 he moved back to
London and became a regular
cricket correspondent for The
Guardian. In 1934 he travelledCricket’s ‘black Plato’
CLR James was one of the 20th century’s most cultured men — he even met Trotsky
BOOKS
CHILDREN’S
BOOK OF THE WEEKNICOLETTE JONES
Yesterday Crumb and the
Storm in a Teacup
by Andy Sagar
Orion £6.99, age 8-12Anyone who enjoys tea and
cake will be delighted by
this delicious debut.
Yesterday, a girl with fox’s
ears, is exhibited at a circus
until the day a talking raven
dissolves her cage and
takes her to a magical,
moving teashop. There she
learns she is a strangeling
— a witch left with humans,
and to be trained in making
magic teas by the
encouraging and
glamorous Miss Dumpling.
An unfortunate encounter
with a spiteful wizard
means she must go on a
quest to undo a spell and
save her own life. With the
help of friendly fellow
strangeling Jack and the
teashop crew, she conjures
up a storm. This story
suggests no conflict can’t
be resolved with a cup
of tea and cake, and is
written with a lively,
inventive imagination and
a great menu of warm-
hearted characters,
mouthwatering treats and
cosy descriptions.WATCH OUT FOR
Wished
by Lissa Evans, illustrated
by Sarah McIntyre and
Bec Barnes
David Fickling £12.99,
age 8+This story of siblings and
a new friend finding
wish-granting candles in
an elderly neighbour’s
house is an enjoyable romp.He was
officially the
brightest boy
on the island
26 3 April 2022