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What We Leave We Carry: The Legacy of John la Rose

Julian May

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BBC Radio 4 Extra - What We Leave We Carry: The Legacy of John la Rose

Burt Caesar on John La Rose, founder of Britain's first black publishing house.

Burt Caesar assesses John La Rose’s legacy - founder of Britain's first black publishing house. With Margaret Busby. From 2011. 

When John La Rose died in 2006, the poet Linton Kwesi Johnson wrote in his obituary:

'the depth and breadth of his contribution to the struggle for cultural and social change, for racial equality and social justice, for the humanisation of society, is unparalleled in the history of the black experience in Britain'. 

Hundreds crammed into his funeral.

In 1966 John La Rose founded New Beacon Books, at first selling Caribbean and African literature from his London home. Then he began publishing himself, becoming the first black publishing house in Britain. The shop and publishing house are still active today. In the early 1980s he organised - with others - the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books.

But his whole life was one of activism and political and cultural involvement. Poets, novelists, theologians, campaigners, sculptors and musicians - all gathered around the kitchen table of this erudite and generous man, liming and planning campaigns. 

Around that same table, actor and director Burt Caesar gathers some of them to tell John La Rose’s story, and consider his legacy.

Featuring:  Burt’s partner Sarah White and old friends Linton Kwesi Johnson, poet and musician, Margaret Busby (founder of Britain's second black publishing house), visiting Trinidadian scholar Susan Craig-James and Professor Gus John, who became the first black Director of Education in the country in the 1980s.

Burt Caesar also visits the bookshop itself and the chambers of Ian MacDonald QC, who as a young lawyer allied himself with La Rose and his causes. He also meets John's son Michael La Rose and his sculptor, Errol Lloyd. 

Using BBC archive of John La Rose, calypso and dub poetry reggae associated with him, Burt tells the story of this remarkable man and how his influence lives on today.

Producer: Julian May 

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2011.

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