Election to the BALH Trustees is an honour which brings challenges and offers a seat for promoting ideas. A dysfunctional secondary education eventually enabled me to study at the LSE (where I gained a wife and a degree in economics) and helped launch me into a career as a school teacher (in Britain and Tanzania), teacher trainer, and eventually, via a PhD at SOAS in African history, to be a university teacher. At primary school I was introduced to local history, and for the last ten years of my time at Goldsmiths London I taught with others an MA course on the south-east of England.
In active retirement I continue to research and write on Africa, the Caribbean, the black diaspora, and local history. These seemingly disparate areas of academic interests helpfully inform each other. I was born in Kent and have lived in the County for the past 45 years. I walk the landscape and speak the language and in the past few years I have written several books and articles on the County’s history. This has included studies on church and Christian mission history which I try to write shaped by my Christian convictions and deep concern for the veracity and integrity of the historian.
