It is difficult to definitively argue which of his books has had the most impact. Much later in life, he produced a manuscript on King Lear, and in response to the news that the sole copy of the manuscript had been lost, James, a writer's writer, simply suggested that he would write it again. Shakespeare was one of James' early literary passions, and as an adult he frequently lectured on the Bard. His father was a schoolmaster, but it was from his mother, Ida Elizabeth, that he acquired his love of reading. authoritarian tendencies in the 1950s.Ī precocious child, by the age of four James was reading the Bible.
He was an early critic of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but he also wrote an analysis of Herman Melville's fiction as part of a critique of U.S. James was a socialist who defied orthodoxy. James' remarkable life began in 1901 in Trinidad and ended in 1989 in England, spanning the first and second World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the Cold War, the demise of political colonialism in India, Africa and the Caribbean, the global protests of the sixties, and the collapse of the former Soviet Union - an event that much of his work anticipated. But it is also due to the intimacy of radio as a medium and the wonderfully creative production of then Montreal Ideas producer Jane Lewis, who whipped me into CBC shape, in what was a baptism by fire. In our brief conversation, he told me the program had brought tears to his Trinidadian father's eyes when he listened to it, as it brought back fond memories of his childhood.Ī large part of the program's success can be attributed to James' growing stature as one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. A number of people approached me after it aired, including someone who recognized my voice from the documentary. It was as if people had been waiting to hear a program about James - the Trinidadian thinker, fiction writer, and author of books on history, politics, sport, popular culture. James, The Black Jacobin, first aired in 2005, it struck a chord with its audience.
When the three-part IDEAS program on C.LR.
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