C L R James, historian, novelist, cultural critic and political activist, was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1901. In 1932 he joined his friend Learie Constantine in Britain, where he became cricket correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. A central figure in the Pan-African movement and the struggle for colonial emancipation, he returned to Trinidad in 1958 in its run-up to independence. He later went back to London, where he died in 1989.