Sam Selvon was one of the first fiction writers to give voice to the Windrush generation.
His ground-breaking 1956 novel The Lonely Londoners is as important today as it ever was, regaling the story of Caribbean immigrants who arrived in Britain full of hope and found themselves struggling in isolation.
The Trinidad-born author, who is celebrated by a Google Doodle on the 95th anniversary of his birth, was writing from personal experience.
After serving as wireless operator with the Royal Navy during the Second World War, Selvon worked as a journalist for the Trinidad Guardian before moving to London in 1950 to seek fame and fortune.
He found neither, instead struggling to make ends meet as he lived in an immigrants’ hostel and later a basement flat in Notting Hill.
But this was to prove a formative period, turning a writer of romantic accounts of Trinidad into a sharp observer of the vagaries of immigrant city life.
In 1952 he published the novel A Brighter Sun, and glowing reviews encouraged him to become a full-time writer.
While he continued to write about his Caribbean homeland, Selvon is remembered best for The Lonely Londoners, in which his characters struggle with a failed sense of promise. They do so in a city which, as protagonist Moses puts it, “divide[s] up in little worlds, and you stay in the world where you belong to and you don’t know anything about what happening in the other ones except what you read in the papers”
The novel pioneered the use of Caribbean Creole in its narrative, helping to stimulate the linguistic liberation of non-British writing from the bonds of standard English.
“I tried to recapture a certain quality in West Indian everyday life,” Selvon later said. “I had in store a number of wonderful anecdotes and could put them into focus, but I had difficulty starting the novel in straight English.
“The people I wanted to describe were entertaining people indeed, but I could not really move. At that stage, I had written the narrative in English and most of the dialogues in dialect. Then I started both narrative and dialogue in dialect and the novel just shot along.”
Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK
11 show all Windrush generation: threat of deportation from UK
1/11 The ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush' arriving at Tilbury Docks from Jamaica, with 482 Jamaicans on board, emigrating to Britain. Getty
2/11 Jamaican immigrants being welcomed by RAF officials from the Colonial Office after the ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush' landed them at Tilbury. PA
3/11 The son of Ruth Williams, a Windrush-generation immigrant, wants to the leave the country after threats of deportation. According to his mother, Mr Haynes applied for British citizenship in 2016 but was rejected, despite Ms Williams having lived in the UK almost permanently since arriving from St Vincent and the Grenadines in 1959. Ruth Williams, 75, said she felt "betrayed" by Britain after the Home Office twice turned down applications for her 35-year-old son, Mozi Haynes, to remain in the country. Ms Williams is understood to have cancer and said she relies heavily on her son for support. PA
4/11 The British liner 'Empire Windrush' at port in 1954. Getty
5/11 Ruth Williams, 75, with her British passport. "I feel betrayed and a second class citizen in my own country," she said. "This makes me so sad and the Home Office must show some compassion. "I am unwell and almost 75, I live on my own and I need my son to stay here. I need my family around me and I can’t face being alone. He has applied to the Home Office and been refused twice." PA
6/11 From the top, hopeful Jamaican boxers Charles Smith, Ten Ansel, Essi Reid, John Hazel, Boy Solas and manager Mortimer Martin arrive at Tilbury on the Empire Windrush in the hope of finding work in Britain. Getty
7/11 Jamaicans reading a newspaper whilst on board the ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush' bound for Tilbury docks in Essex. Getty
8/11 After half a century in Britain, Anthony Bryan decided it was time to go abroad. But the decision set off a nightmare that saw him lose his job, detained twice and almost deported to Jamaica. AFP/Getty
9/11 Jamaica-born Anthony Bryan poses outside his home in Edmonton, north London. Now 60 and a grandfather, Bryan thought the issue could be resolved swiftly, as he legally moved to Britain with his family as part of the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants after World War II. In 1948, the ship Windrush brought the first group of migrants from the West Indies to help rebuild post-war Britain, and many others followed from around the Commonwealth. A 1971 law gave them indefinite leave to remain, but many never formalised their status, often because they were children who came over on their parents' passports and then never applied for their own. AFP/Getty Images
10/11 Three Jamaican immigrants (left to right) John Hazel, a 21-year-old boxer, Harold Wilmot, 32, and John Richards, a 22-year-old carpenter, arriving at Tilbury on board the ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush', smartly dressed in zoot suits and trilby hats. Getty
11/11 Newly arrived Jamaican immigrants on board the 'Empire Windrush' at Tilbury in 1948. Getty
The novel’s sequels Moses Ascending (1975) and Moses Migrating (1983) also depicted immigrant life, as did many of Selvon’s short stories.
A lyrical and witty writer, he received numerous literary awards and honorary doctorates from the universities of West Indies and Warwick - even after relocating to Canada, where his work received little attention – before his death in 1994.
Despite writing of exile and alienation, Selvon’s work frequently “has a way of capturing the humour in the situation”, noted writer Helon Habila in 2007.
He added: “The message of The Lonely Londoners is even more vital today than in 50s Britain: that, although we live in societies increasingly divided along racial, ideological and religious lines, we must remember what we still have in common – our humanity".
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SAM Selvon found fame with his 1956 novel The Lonely Londoners which focused on the migration of West Indians to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, known as the Windrush generation.
A Google Doodle celebrates the life of the writer on what would have been his 95th birthday.
GoodReads.com Sam Selvon found fame with his novel The Lonely Londoners
Who was Sam Selvon?
Samuel Dickson Selvon was born on May 20, 1923 in San Fernando in Trinidad, he had six other siblings.
He started work aged 15 and was a wireless operator with the Royal Naval Reserve during the Second World War.
When the war ended he wrote for the Trinidad Guardian as a reporter and also started writing stories and descriptive passages under various pseudonyms such as Michael Wentworth.
Sam moved to London in the 1950s and worked as a clerk for the Indian Embassy and wrote in his spare time.
Google Doodle as marked Sam Selvon's birthday
He also worked for the BBC producing two television scripts, Anansi the Spiderman, and Home Sweet India.
Sam was a fellow in creative writing at the University of Dundee between 1975 and 1977 and he later moved to Alberta, Canada and taught creative writing as a visiting professor at the University of Victoria.
He later became a writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary.
Sam died on a trip to Trinidad of respiratory failure due to extensive bronchopneumonia and chronic lung disease on 16 April 1994.
What was The Lonely Londoners about?
Published in 1956 The Lonely Londoners is his most famous work and noted for his use of creolised English for both the narrative and dialogue.
It focuses on the experiences of migrant West Indians who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s and tells their daily lives and the differences between them, due to race, class and wealth.
The central character is Moses Aloetta, a veteran émigré who, after more than ten years in London, has still not achieved anything of note and whose homesickness increases as he gets older.
Sam started writing the book in standard English but thought this didn’t convey the experiences and thoughts of his characters and created a narrator who used the same creolised form of English as the characters.
WIKIMEDIA The Lonely Londoners looks at the plight of the Windrush generation having come to Britain
The significance of The Lonely Londoners
Along with George Lamming’s novel The Emigrants in 1954, The Lonely Londoners is an early example of what has become known as post-colonial writing.
Critic Helon Habila wrote in March 2007: "One imagines immediately the loneliness that must have gnawed at these immigrants whose memory of their sunny, convivial island communities was their only refuge at such moments.
“But although this is a book about exile and alienation, it is not a sad book. Even when his characters are under-going the direst of tribulations, Selvon has a way of capturing the humour in the situation.
“The message of The Lonely Londoners is even more vital today than in 50s Britain: that, although we live in societies increasingly divided along racial, ideological and religious lines, we must remember what we still have in common - our humanity."
