Bageye at the Wheel
Bageye at the Wheel is a 2012 memoir by British author Colin Grant, giving a semi-autobiographical account of 1970s' Luton through the portrayal of his father Clinton "Bageye" Grant, a Jamaican migrant to the UK. The story itself is one of observation of a period whereby a provincial town of immigrants and their larger families congregate, yet try to assimilate into a British culture that had not yet been accustomed to diversity among ethnicities. Nevertheless, this indifference to a somewhat unforgiving environment is neatly summed up by the unwavering, independent "Bageye", who refuses to blend in but rather stand out as a linchpin for the so-called "Windrush generation".
According to the review in The Guardian: "In its toughness and tenderness, as well as its sensuous and telling details, Bageye at the Wheel is a father memoir that deserves to be as celebrated as Ian Jack's essay 'Finished With Engines' or Gary Imlach's My Father and Other Working-Class Football Heroes. It's a quietly unforgettable book about innocence and experience, about memory and cruelty – and the cruelty of memory." For Peter Carty in The Independent, "a lot of the book's appeal comes from Grant's insider perspective on the Afro-Caribbean experience in the UK." Keith Bruce notes in The Herald: "These pages are populated by a bunch of immigrant men who have bestowed Truman Capote-style nicknames on each other. There's the popular Summer Wear with his unseasonal clothing, the fastidious Tidy Boots and the tardy Soon Come. The opening chapters are stand-alone short stories about the domestic adventures of Bageye and these "spars" and are almost reminiscent of Tom Sawyer."
Colin Grant is a historian and BBC producer. He is also the author of Negro with a Hat, a biography of Marcus Garvey, and I&I: The Natural Mystics, a group biography of The Wailers, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston.