CLR James

CLR James will be remembered wherever cricket is played, yet his career is enigmatic. Farrukh Dhondy's new biography sets out to decode the enigma and unravel the long journey James made from Trinidad to Brixton. CLR James was a marxist philosopher, intent on paper at least on world revolution. But later in life, he rejected the incendiary rhetoric of his youth. He was an unabashed elitist, but at the same time fought discrimination of any sort. Farrukh draws on his friendship with CLR James, which began when James was already an old man and continued until his death at the age of 89. He assesses the contribution James made to modern political thinking and to the growth of Black consciousness. He celebrates his love of cricket and shows how the concepts of fair play and gamesmanship could and did become the abiding principles of a Black colonial revolutionary.