Who’s missing from that list of Great Black Britons

There are two striking things about the new book, 100 Great Black Britons, which was compiled to celebrate the achievements of British people from an African or Caribbean heritage. The first is the sheer number of people included who are ghastly or mediocre or both. The second is the number of truly brilliant black Britons who were left off the list — for reasons which are not, I think, terribly mysterious.

Under the ‘both’ category we have, to name but a few, Diane Abbott, David Lammy and the reliably hilarious Dawn Butler. There is also Kehinde Andrews, of course, a lecturer at a former polytechnic who will be appearing on a TV programme in your front room very soon opining about how everything in the universe, from hydrogen to oganesson, is racist. That man of limitless talent, Stormzy, makes the cut, as does Valerie Amos.

But, as has been pointed out by the black writer Tomiwa Owolade, while there are black authors on the list, there is no room for Zadie Smith — today probably the most (rightly) renowned of them all. Does Zadie not quite match up to the brilliance of the transgender model Munroe Bergdorf? The next chairman of the BBC — with any luck — Trevor Phillips is missing. Brave, acute and witty, Phillips was also a pioneer of black involvement in public life.

But then there’s no room for Trevor McDonald either; still less the brilliant black educationalists Katharine Birbalsingh and Tony Sewell. The latter has elevated countless inner city black kids into Russell Group universities through his charity Generating Genius and also served as education adviser to Boris Johnson when he was mayor of London. And that perhaps nudges us towards an answer — except to say that, incredibly, Raheem Sterling, easily the best footballer to emerge from this country in the past 25 years, is not on the list.