April 2012

Caryl Phillips

Resident in the Room from 21 - 24 April 2012.

Of course, it was T.S. Eliot who famously declared, ‘April is the cruelest month’ and how right he was. Four days ago, soon after I ascended in the slow, slow, lift to the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, it became clear that the weather would soon be taking a cruel turn. High winds and lashing rain one minute; the next a hint of blue sky, a slither of sunshine, and then back again to high winds and lashing rain. One was tempted to call it ‘squally’ weather. Another word which sprang to mind was ‘marooned’ – high above London, high above the Thames, looking down on Europe’s largest city.

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Caryl Phillips was born in St Kitts, West Indies, grew up in Leeds and was educated at Oxford. He has written numerous scripts for film, theatre, radio and television. He is the author of six novels: The Final Passage, A State of Independence, Higher Ground, Cambridge, Crossing the River, The Nature of Blood, and four works of non-fiction, The European Tribe, The Atlantic Sound, A Distant Shore and, published in September 2005, Dancing in the Dark.

He has also edited Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging and The Right Set: The Faber Book of Tennis. Phillips’ awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenhein Fellowship, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. He has taught at universities in Sweden, Singapore, India, Ghana, Barbados and the United States. He divides his time between London and New York City.

A London Address podcasts are in collaboration with the Guardian.