Incomparable World (Black Britain: Writing Back, 1)
First published by Quartet in 1996, this is a rollicking account of Black lives in London and Middlesex during a specific period in the late 18th century. Buckram, an illiterate seller of pornographic magazines, Georgie George, ‘King of the Beggars’ and William Supple, an actor turned professional gambler, are the principal characters in a broad cast of American ex-slaves living precariously in London, having been freed by the British through their service to King George in the War of Independence. The story ranges enjoyably across dangerous streets, disreputable taverns with noisy games of dominoes, and squalid bedrooms.
The historical accuracy seems unerring: there are great passages of period slang, and I could not fault the topography. And yet the freewheeling lives of these characters in St Giles and Covent Garden still, cleverly, evoke the modern lives of their successors, for example in the equally run-down environs of London’s Ladbroke Grove in the 1960s and 70s. This description, for instance, seems timeless: ‘The noise from the crowd didn’t quite drown out the noise from the massive alehouse. Bass-heavy music…rattled the glass and ancient timbers of the Bull Inn. And the waiting throng, though packed solid, somehow moved in time to the music in a weld of hips, elbows and anxious-happy faces.’
The descriptions are superb, poetic and immensely vivid. If the book has a fault, it is rather late before the three main characters come together in the main thrust of the plot. This is an ingenious con trick on American slave traders and their ambassador in London (John Adams, later the 2nd President of the USA) which could have been fruitfully shown at much greater length.
However, this is still a funny, thrilling and very convincing account, truly incomparable to any other novels set in 18th-century London.
