Sierra-Leone born barrister and writer Augustus Boyle Chamberlayne Merriman-Labor’s bravely written book, Britons Through Negro Spectacles, from 1909, is the first instalment in the Black Britain: Writing Back series.
Compiled by Bernardine Evaristo, it also includes Dillibe Onyeama’s A Black Boy At Eton, in which Onyeama writes about his time as one of the first Black students to study there during the 1960s, and Growing Out by Barbara Blake Hannah, who migrated from the Caribbean to the UK and became the first Black female TV journalist during that era.
This book was panned by contemporary critics, who were angered by what they regarded as impertinence at a time when colonial fever was rife. Merriman-Labor’s London travelogue has some similarities with what came later: Alastair Cooke’s Letter From America, or even Armando Ianucci’s honouring of absurdity.
However, this work spoke to Africans who had not yet experienced life in London, or anywhere else in Britain. Merriman-Labor was clearly way ahead of his time with this razor-sharp satire, with many of his observations both painfully accurate and not entirely without humour.
Britons Through Negro Spectacles, A.B.C. Merriman-Labor (Penguin)
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words DAVID NOBAKHT
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