Bageye at the Wheel

A 1970s Childhood in Suburbia

Colin Grant

$24.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Vintage
15 April 2013

Biography: general; History; British & Irish history; Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000; Black & Asian studies

In the tradition of Sam Selvon's Lonely Londoners and V.S.

Naipaul's Miguel Street, Grant's Bageye at the Wheel does for Luton and the UK what Miguel Street did for Naipaul, Port of Spain and Trinidad.

A powerful prescient memoir of life in 1970s Britain for a child of Windrush generation parents.

'This book is a classic' Sunday Telegraph

To his fellow West Indians who assemble every weekend for the all-night poker game at Mrs Knight's, he is always known as Bageye. There aren't very many black men in Luton in 1972 and most of them gather there- Summer Wear, Pioneer, Anxious, Tidy Boots - each has his nickname. Bageye already finds it a struggle to feed his family on his wage from Vauxhall Motors, but now his wife Blossom has set her heart on her sons going to private school and she will not settle for anything less.

This is the story of a father seen through the eyes of his ten-year-old son. It's a wry and gentle comedy about unfulfilling day jobs and late night poker games, of illegal mini-cabs and small-scale drug-dealing.

And it is also about a family struggling to belong in post-Windrush Britain and growing up in a vanished world of 1970s suburbia.

LOOK OUT FOR COLIN GRANT'S NEW BOOK- Homecoming - the first oral history of the Windrush generation

By: Colin Grant
Imprint: Vintage
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 130mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 203g
ISBN: 9780099552390
ISBN 10: 0099552396
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 15 April 2013
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Colin Grant is a historian and BBC radio producer. He is the author of Negro with a Hat, a biography of Marcus Garvey and I&I: The Natural Mystics, a group biography of the original Wailers, Marley, Tosh and Livingston. Grant's memoir, Bageye at the Wheel, was shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerly Prize. The son of Jamaican emigrants he lives in Brighton. The son of Jamaican emigrants, he lives in Brighton.

Reviews for Bageye at the Wheel: A 1970s Childhood in Suburbia

I loved every word Independent [A] vivid and bittersweet window into a vanished world of 1970s suburbia Metro A quietly unforgettable book Guardian A fabulous example of storytelling Glasgow Herald A classic Spectator