Northern Soul

One of the great works of journalism to have come out of the Jamaican-British encounter is Journey to an Illusion by the late Donald Hinds. Published in London in 1966, the book is made up of a series of interviews with Commonwealth citizens who had settled hopefully on these shores after the war. Hinds, who was born in Jamaica in 1934 and worked in London as a bus conductor, was disappointed to find that the British were not only unmindful of the Commonwealth, but disinclined to help African-Caribbean immigrants. (Gallingly for him, Italians in the Soho confectionary business were extended a warmer welcome, even though they had fought on Hitler’s side.) Inevitably as a ‘clippie’ on double-deckers, Hinds was exposed to racism.

Last year, the Proms had a ‘Northern Soul’ special concert; and Benjamin Myers won the Goldsmith’s Prize for Cuddy, his polyphonic novel about St Cuthbert’s afterlife. I do not think he will win the prize again this year for Rare Singles, his novel about Northern Soul. I am glad about the Prom though, since I knew very little about the music; and listening to it did not appreciably deepen my enjoyment of this novel. Sentimentality is not a bad thing per se, but it is a difficult genre to do well, and Myers doesn’t do it half badly. The central figure is Earlon ‘Bucky’ Bronco, an elderly American widower wracked by pain, whose musical career comprised two singles, one barely released and both largely forgotten.