John L Williams – författare

Bloody Valentine is the story of the murder of a young woman called Lynette White in the Cardiff docklands (aka Tiger Bay) on Valentine's Day 1988.It's also the story of the miscarriage of justice that came after, when three black men, 'the Cardiff Three', were wrongly convicted of her murder. It's a brutally frank tale of racism and police corruption, terrible misogynist violence and the grim realities of sex work. It's a book that got so close to the bone that the author was sued for libel by the police and received death threats from a variety of minor characters. It's an indelible portrait of life in the underbelly of Thatcher's Britain.This new edition includes an introduction and afterword bringing the extraordinary, unhappy saga up to date.

In the summer of 1989 John Williams embarked on an epic journey through a deeply troubled USA.A right-wing Republican administration seemed bent on rolling back the advances of the civil rights era; the Supreme Court were partially reversing the Roe vs Wade ruling on abortion; criminals from the Central Park rapist to the serial killers Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacey were all over the news.Who did Williams turn to make sense of all this? America's crime writers - that's who. He talked to novelists like James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard, Sara Paretsky and James Lee Burke, and visited the places they write about, like Los Angeles and Detroit, Chicago and New Orleans.The result was an instant cult classic that remains deeply relevant today: both an incisive and funny travelogue and a revealing guide to the lives and works of America's finest crime writers, caught at their peak.

Historian, revolutionary and cricket writer, CLR James was one of the truly radical voices of the twentieth century. Born in Trinidad in the final days of the Victorian era, he debated with Trotsky, played cricket with Constantine, was published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf, inspired Kwame Nkrumah, and was a profound influence on the British Black Power movement. And yet by the late 1970s, CLR James was all but forgotten. The books he had written over the past half century were nearly all out of print. There were a few circles in which his name rang a bell: serious students of Black history; obsessive cricket fans. But that was it.When he died in Brixton in 1989, CLR James was internationally famous - lauded as the greatest of Black British intellectuals: the 'Black Plato', according to The Times.The ideas he put forward in his own time - of the importance of identity alongside class, of rebellion coming from below, of the leading roles of Black people, women and youth in political struggle - have gradually made their way to the forefront of our political thinking. His two great books, The Black Jacobins and Beyond a Boundary, still have the power to change readers' understanding of the world today.But while CLR James's work has been much examined, his long and remarkable life story has often been overlooked. For the first time, in a biography full of original research, human drama and keen insight, John L. Williams unveils the rich and compelling story of an intellectual giant. In doing so, he firmly establishes the importance of CLR James for the twenty-first century - if Black Britain has had a presiding genius, it remains CLR James.

Historian, revolutionary and cricket writer, CLR James was one of the truly radical voices of the twentieth century. Born in Trinidad in the final days of the Victorian era, he debated with Trotsky, played cricket with Constantine, was published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf, inspired Kwame Nkrumah, and was a profound influence on the British Black Power movement. And yet by the late 1970s, CLR James was all but forgotten. The books he had written over the past half century were nearly all out of print. There were a few circles in which his name rang a bell: serious students of Black history; obsessive cricket fans. But that was it.When he died in Brixton in 1989, CLR James was internationally famous - lauded as the greatest of Black British intellectuals: the 'Black Plato', according to The Times.The ideas he put forward in his own time - of the importance of identity alongside class, of rebellion coming from below, of the leading roles of Black people, women and youth in political struggle - have gradually made their way to the forefront of our political thinking. His two great books, The Black Jacobins and Beyond a Boundary, still have the power to change readers' understanding of the world today.But while CLR James's work has been much examined, his long and remarkable life story has often been overlooked. For the first time, in a biography full of original research, human drama and keen insight, John L. Williams unveils the rich and compelling story of an intellectual giant. In doing so, he firmly establishes the importance of CLR James for the twenty-first century - if Black Britain has had a presiding genius, it remains CLR James.

BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK'A teeming chronicle of those scorching months. Superbly researched.' THE TIMES'Scorching, animated and essential reading. Superb.' THE MAIL ON SUNDAY'Grippingly captures the three months that shook Britain's cultural landscape' PAULINE BLACK'Scorching, seething and scintillating, Heatwave conjures a slow-burning collage of a country on the brink. I lived through those cruel months, and Williams recreates them with intense skill' SIMON GARFIELD'An absolute joy' PETE PAPHIDES'Engrossing...powerful...goes way beyond nostalgia' DAVID KYNASTONWith temperatures soaring to 35ºC, severe water shortages and a sunburned population queuing at the standpipes, the summer of 1976 was always remembered as Britain's hottest.But the wave that hit the UK that year was also cultural and political, with upheaval on the streets, in parliament, on the cricket pitch and on the radios and TV sets of a nation at a crossroads.Before this blistering summer, Britain seemed stuck in the post-war era, a country where people were all in it together - as long as you were white, male and straight. In July, Tom Robinson writes a song called Glad to be Gay, and by August bank holiday, Black youth are making the police run for their lives in the almighty riot at the Notting Hill Carnival. But with the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson suddenly quitting, the pound sinking and the economy tanking, a restless immigrant population and increasing dissatisfaction in the old world order, the weather seemed to boil up the country to the point where the lid blows off.Weaving a rich tapestry of the news stories of the year, with social commentary and dozens of first-person interviews with those that were there at the time, Williams's reappraisal of the summer of '76 is an evocative, sometimes nostalgic but always an unflinching read. Heatwave takes us back to relive the events of that summer and asks - have we really moved on as much as we would have liked?

John L. Williams draws on original research and interviews to provide a portrait of a young woman on the cusp of stardom, whose rise to fame was in many ways symbolic of a changing world. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru

BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'A teeming chronicle of those scorching months. Superbly researched.' THE TIMES 'Scorching, animated and essential reading. Superb.' THE MAIL ON SUNDAY'Grippingly captures the three months that shook Britain's cultural landscape' PAULINE BLACK'Scorching, seething and scintillating, Heatwave conjures a slow-burning collage of a country on the brink. I lived through those cruel months, and Williams recreates them with intense skill' SIMON GARFIELD'An absolute joy' PETE PAPHIDES'Engrossing...powerful...goes way beyond nostalgia' DAVID KYNASTONWith temperatures soaring to 35ºC, severe water shortages and a sunburned population queuing at the standpipes, the summer of 1976 was always remembered as Britain's hottest.But the wave that hit the UK that year was also cultural and political, with upheaval on the streets, in parliament, on the cricket pitch and on the radios and TV sets of a nation at a crossroads.Before this blistering summer, Britain seemed stuck in the post-war era, a country where people were all in it together - as long as you were white, male and straight. In July, Tom Robinson writes a song called Glad to be Gay, and by August bank holiday, Black youth are making the police run for their lives in the almighty riot at the Notting Hill Carnival. But with the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson suddenly quitting, the pound sinking and the economy tanking, a restless immigrant population and increasing dissatisfaction in the old world order, the weather seemed to boil up the country to the point where the lid blows off.Weaving a rich tapestry of the news stories of the year, with social commentary and dozens of first-person interviews with those that were there at the time, Williams's reappraisal of the summer of '76 is an evocative, sometimes nostalgic but always an unflinching read. Heatwave takes us back to relive the events of that summer and asks - have we really moved on as much as we would have liked?