A unique Caribbean voice
On 11 June 2020, a statue in Bristol was damaged. But while the media debates continued to rage about the toppling of the figure of slave trader Edward Colston during a Black Lives Matter protest the previous week, the defacement of this bronze bust in the St Pauls area attracted little comment. Arguably, though, the man depicted, the groundbreaking playwright and actor Alfred Fagon, is much more relevant to Bristol’s residents today than the controversial merchant who lived three centuries earlier.
Born in southern Jamaica in 1937, one of 11 children of an orange-plantation worker, Fagon migrated to Britain in 1955 when his homeland was still a colony of the empire. Initially, the teenager worked for British Rail in Nottingham before a stint in the army – during which he became a
