Tag Archives: history

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak with two truly inspiring members of the Cocoa Research Centre (CRC) at The UWI: Professor Pathmanathan Umaharan, its head, and Dr Darin Sukha, its food technologist. I met them 16 years ago, when I started working at the university as …

In one of his final interviews, at the end of the tour of England in 1963, Frank Worrell laid out his plans for the future to Ian Wooldridge. I quoted some of it in my biography, Son of Grace, where he refers to the background of hostility he had faced. …

Writing is a solitary experience. It’s you and your thoughts—all the chatter is internal. I do not quiver at the notion of solitude; I’m quite happy to be ensconced within my brain. When I finished with the book I had been working on for five or six years, Son of …

Over the years that I spent researching and writing the bio­graphy of Sir Frank Worrell, I often referred to him—sharing snippets and soliciting information—through this column. The book, Son of Grace, was published six months ago, and I found myself curiously unable to mention its existence, feeling awkward to say …

Discovering Frank Worrell through a comic book was a powerful moment in my primary school days. A voracious reader, I was growing up with the idea that heroic figures were remote figures from faraway lands. The one major investment in books in our home had been a set of encyclopaedias …

We can divide the discussions into two. The internal, what’s happening inside the body of West Indies cricket, its circuitry; and the external, the factors contributing to its current state. It’s really an analogy for the state of our region. Everything applies to what’s happening in our societies. We have …

I first met UWI Professor Emeritus Dr Brinsley Samaroo many years ago on a radio programme, where I brought up an aspect of race relations in Trinidad and Tobago that I thought his explanation was missing. He agreed with me, and we spoke for a long time following the programme. …

I am sure you would remember this truism: “Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder!” I accepted this aphorism as a means of teaching that persons could have divergent views about the same incident. Professor Richard Drayton at King’s College, London, in 2011, wrote: “History is not merely reflection; …

Alas, the mystery of Sabina Park’s name remains a matter of speculation. Three things are clear however. There was a woman named Sabina Park. There was a place called Sabina Park Pen, and Sabina Park is a Test ground in Jamaica.  The most probable explanation is that the ground was …

“[…] With a family tree consisting of thousands of relatives, this important aspect of our history—which was researched and confirmed by Dr Jeff Davidson, former leader of the Tobago House of Assembly—was told to me as a child, and narrated during our great family reunions over in Tobago.  “Knowing our …

True story: ‘In 1919—over 80 years after Emancipation—a Trinidadian petitioned the King for compensation for 31 freed persons previously owned by his grandfather, which he claimed had never been paid.’ It’s one of the astonishing tales recounted by Professor Emerita Bridget Brereton in her newly released book, History Matters: Selected …

Are we truly a banana republic? Or have we gotten too accustomed to the imperial arrogance of US ambassadors? Is the government beholden to Spain to such a degree that we have to servilely kowtow to the absurdities thrown at us by Spanish Ambassador Señor Javier Carbajosa Sanchez? As other …