Moses Aloetta, an old hand who has lived in London for ten years, goes to Waterloo station to meet another boat train of hopeful new arrivals from the West Indies.

They've come to find work and wealth in the capital of the mother country, but they meet with a cold welcome and bitter weather.

Despite this, Moses and his friends of the Windrush generation go about making new lives for themselves with vigour and panache, navigating the rules and regulations of their new home, lending support to each other when needed, learning to survive; it's not long before, as Moses puts it “the boys coming and going, working, eating, sleeping, going about the vast metropolis like veteran Londoners.”

Sam Selvon's rich and touching 1956 novel about the lives of a group of Caribbean immigrants in London.

Abridged in five parts by Lauris Morgan-Griffiths

Read by Don Warrington.

Producer: Sara Davies

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2014.

*** THE LONELY LONDONDERS will be followed on 4 Extra by Colin MacInnes's vibrant novel about London, ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS, set just a couple of years later as racial tensions rise.

Together, the two books offer an unforgettable portrait of a city and a society undergoing convulsive change. Show less