John Phipps

A beautiful radio adaptation: Radio 4’s The Housing Lark reviewed

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Samuel Selvon, author of The Lonely Londoners, in 1958. Image: ANL / Shutterstock

Nineteen fifty-six: the Suez crisis, the first Tesco, Jim Laker takes 19 wickets in a match. But also: Trinidadian pianist Winifred Atwell becomes the first black woman to have a UK number one with ‘The Poor People of Paris’; Kenneth Tynan announces a playwriting competition in the Observer, which is won by the Trinidadian dramatist Errol John, and a third Trinidadian, Sam Selvon, publishes his most enduring novel, The Lonely Londoners.

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