Photograph taken by Cambridge Evening News and reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
Also receiving honorary degrees that year were Dame Janet Baker, Dr Joseph Needham and Dr Lionel Rosen. The oration given for Baldwin at the ceremony was by G.H. Moore, Professor of American Literature. Image courtesy of Hull University Archives.
The event was organised by the Pan African Association of Writers & Journalists and the ‘Ngũgĩ Defence Committee’. Archive material courtesy of the George Padmore Institute, London.
Photograph kindly shared by photographer, Fanny Dubes.
Photograph by John Haynes (johnhaynesphotography.net).
Archive material courtesy of the George Padmore Institute, London.
1949 |
Baldwin travels from Paris to London in the hope of establishing magazine contacts in the city. |
1955 |
James Baldwin visits London to try and stage his first play "The Amen Corner" and to seek a publisher for "Giovanni's Room", a groundbreaking work exploring gay male love set in Paris. At the end of the year, the British publisher Michael Joseph accepts "Giovanni’s Room" for publication after it is rejected by Baldwin’s U.S. publisher Knopf. |
Late 1959 or early 1960 |
According to Baldwin’s biographer James Campbell, Baldwin visited England during this period "when he didn’t intend to." (See James Campbell’s biography of Baldwin Talking at the Gates, first published by Viking in 1991 and reissued with a new introduction by Polygon and Birlinn Ltd in 2021). |
1962 |
Baldwin travels to London where various publishers try to persuade him to leave his publisher Michael Joseph, including Weidenfeld & Nicholson. He remains loyal to Michael Joseph and meets Raleigh Trevelyan who will become his long-standing editor at the publishing house. Baldwin is mentioned in the Guardian as one of the U.S. authors due to attend The Edinburgh Writers International Conference in August. |
1963 |
Baldwin travels to London for the U.K. publication of his novel Another Country. He is interviewed by journalist and novelist Donald Hinds for the April edition of the West Indian Gazette. The West Indian Gazette was a weekly newspaper founded by activist and writer Claudia Jones in 1958 with support from Amy Garvey (widow of Marcus Garvey). As Ionie Benjamin writes: "The West Indian Gazette appeared and was to set a precedent for West Indian Newspaper publishing in Britain in the 1950s. It challenged racism and laws on immigration which were basically aimed at Black people; it offered an alternative and opposing voice; it promoted the Black cause." Ionie Benjamin The Black Press in Britain (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books 1995) pg. 41-2. |
1965 |
Baldwin travels to Britain and meets the philosopher Bertrand Russell at his home in London. (Baldwin is, for a period, involved in Russell’s International War Crimes Tribunal denouncing America’s War in Vietnam). On February 18th, Baldwin takes part in a debate at The Cambridge Union at the University of Cambridge with the conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr and supports the union’s motion: "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro". In a post-debate vote, Baldwin wins the motion with 544 votes to Buckley’s 184 votes. Baldwin is told of the assassination of Malcolm X while dining with his sister Gloria in London on February 21st. He cancels his visit to Edinburgh planned for the following day. |
1966 |
Baldwin travels to London to discuss a possible film adaptation of his play, Blues for Mister Charlie. |
1967 |
James Baldwin asks his editor, Raleigh Trevelyan, to find him a house in London to live in, ‘where he would be joined by some of his family’. Baldwin briefly lives in Chelsea, although, as Trevelyan recalled later, ‘The London experience didn’t suit him’. (‘Blues for Baldwin’ by Raleigh Trevelyan from the Telegraph, 6/12/1987, pg. 21). On May 28th, the Guardian reports that on flying into Heathrow the previous week, on route to Cologne, Baldwin was held at customs and told that he was banned from entering the country by the Home Office because of his association with Bertrand Russell and the International War Crimes Tribunal (despite Baldwin having recently publicly distanced himself from the Tribunal). Baldwin was allowed in later that day but given no explanation of what had caused the incident, nor why he was eventually allowed in. In a letter to the Observer (25/06/67, pg.14) Bertrand Russell writes that he had been warned in a letter from Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, that those connected to the Tribunal may not be allowed into the country. |
1968 |
Baldwin and comedian Dick Gregory are filmed by Baldwin’s friend, the director Sir Horace Ové, at the West Indian Student’s Centre, Earl’s Court, London. Ové’s film, Baldwin’s N***** is released in Britain and the U.S. |
1971 |
Baldwin is guest speaker at the Soledad Brothers Rally, at Westminster Hall, London, on April 20th. [‘The Soledad Brothers' was the name given to three black inmates who were charged with the January 1970 beating of John V. Mills at Soledad State Prison in California. George Jackson (twenty-nine), John Clutchette (twenty-eight), and Fleet Drumgo (twenty-six) were accused of killing the white prison guard in retaliation for the earlier shooting of three black inmates at San Quentin by another guard, whose case had been dismissed by a grand jury as “justifiable homicide.”’ From the introduction to ‘Speech from the Soledad Rally’, in James Baldwin: The Cross of Redemption, Uncollected Writings, Edited by Randall Kenan (Vintage, 2011), pg. 120]. The 1971 fundraiser event in London was organised by, amongst others: ‘the friends of Soledad, Afro American Solidarity Committee, Angela Davis Defence Committee, Black Liberation Front, Black Panther Movement, Black Unity and Freedom Party, Cinema Action, Film Services Limited, West Indian Students’ Association, and many, many individuals’ (from the publication produced after the event, Speeches From the Soledad Brothers Rally, Central Hall, Westminster, 20/4/71, (London: Friends of Soledad, 1974). Baldwin and writer Nikki Giovanni are filmed in London, in conversation, for the U.S public TV show, ‘Soul!’. (Their exchange is later published as a book in A Dialogue, by Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, first published in the U.S in 1973, and then in Britain by Michael Joseph, in 1975). |
1972 |
Baldwin arrives in London, in April, for the launch of his essay collection, No Name on the Street. |
1976 |
Baldwin travels to Hull in July where he is awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Hull. |
1978 |
Baldwin writes an introduction for South African film director Michael Raeburn’s book Black Fire! and is photographed with Raeburn, in January, at the launch of the book at The Africa Centre in London. Baldwin is guest speaker at a meeting calling for the release of the Kenyan author, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, at The Friend’s Meeting House, Euston Rd, London on March 21st after Ngũgĩ is imprisoned in Kenya following the publication of his play Ngaahika Ndenda (I Will Marry When I Want) written in Gĩkũyũ and critical of the country’s ruling elite. The event is organised by ‘The Ngũgĩ Defence Committee’. |
1979 |
Baldwin travels to London to promote his novel, Just Above My Head, published by Michael Joseph. |
1984 |
Baldwin turns sixty and travels to London where he is interviewed for the BBC 2 programme, ‘Frank Delaney,’ broadcast in December. |
1985 |
Baldwin presents awards to writers, Fred D’Aguiar, David Dabydeen and Caryl Phillips, at the Greater London Council Literature awards on the 27th June. Baldwin visits the C.L.R James Library in Hackney after it is renamed for the Trinidadian activist, historian and writer following a successful campaign led by anti-racist campaigners in the borough. Baldwin speaks at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August. |
1986 |
James Baldwin and Sir Horace Ové appear in-conversation at an event at the National Film Theatre in London on the 19th of September. |
1987 |
Baldwin travels to London for the opening of The Amen Corner at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn. The play opens on 20th of January and runs until the 7th of March. The production is directed by Anton Phillips and it is produced by Carib Theatre productions. On the 12th of March, The Amen Corner moves to the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue and runs until the 30th of May. James Baldwin dies in the South of France on the 30th of November. |
1988 |
Race Today organise a Memorial Event for James Baldwin at Brixton Town Hall on Feb 3rd with speakers, Maya Angelou and Caryl Phillips. The event is leafleted by the Black, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (BLGBT) group, rukus! to raise awareness on the implications of ‘Clause 28’ or Section 28, legislation introduced, and eventually passed, by Margaret Thatcher’s government banning the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in schools and libraries. (The cultural archives of rukus! are held at London Metropolitan Archives). |
*This timeline will be developed and added to as the project progresses.
Our aim is to eventually produce a more extensive visual timeline of Baldwin’s visits and relationship to Britain, featuring archival materials related to his associations with British-based activists, artists and intellectuals.
It will also include all of Baldwin’s appearances on radio and television.