The Essay: Caribbean Voices

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The Essay: Caribbean Voices: Colin Grant on VS Naipaul

Colin Grant on VS Naipaul

Caribbean Voices

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Caribbean Voices, Colin Grant on VS Naipaul

A personal memory of the controversial Nobel laureate, who began his career in radio.

Trinidad-born Nobel laureate VS Naipaul began his career working in radio for the BBC. It is also where writer Colin Grant met him half a century later.

Nobel laureate Naipaul began his career working in radio for the BBC, and it is also where writer Colin Grant met him towards the end of his life half a century later. How had the giant of Trinidadian literature changed during that time since being told to "write like a West Indian" and quickly becoming the precocious editor of Caribbean Voices? This polemical exploration celebrates his contributions, as well as examining his many contradictions.

Seventy-five years ago, the revolutionary Caribbean Voices strand was established on the Overseas Service by trailblazing Jamaican broadcaster Una Marson. Every week for over a decade, it gave exposure on radio to emerging writers from the region such as Sam Selvon, Derek Walcott and George Lamming - many for the first time. Delving into the BBC's Written Archives, five writers go in search of five important figures who contributed to the programme throughout the 1940s and 50s, each of whom changed the literary landscape in a different way. This series is part archival treasure hunt, part cultural history and part personal reflections on the people behind a landmark institution.

Producer: Ciaran Bermingham

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