George Padmore Institute gets Lottery boost

Published: 26th November, 2010
by PETER GRUNER

A FINSBURY Park-based Afro-Caribbean literary archive – chronicling the history of black Britain – has been awarded a £206,000 ­Heritage Lottery grant.

The George Padmore Institute, above the New Beacon Bookshop in Stroud Green Road, will use the money to put its wealth of material online as well as bringing pop­ular Afro-Caribbean and Asian and black British authors to local schools.

The archive belonged to the bookshop’s late founder John La Rose, who opened the premises in 1966 and collected thousands of documents and books.

Trinidadian Mr La Rose, who died aged 78 in 2006, was a poet, essayist, publisher, film-maker and director of the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books.

His wife Sarah, co-founder of the shop, welcomed the grant, which will help provide a lasting historical bank of work on the black and Asian community.

She said: “Children will be able to learn a ­little about the struggle experienced by ancestors and relatives who first came to Britain from various parts of the world. Ours is a small family book business and we make very little profit. We survive because we managed to buy the property back in the 1970s. People work for very small wages.”

Recent visitors to the shop have included Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Scottish Booker Prize winner James Kelman.

New Beacon’s biggest seller currently is its self-published Art in the Caribbean with more than 40 portraits painted since the 1940s. The book contains an introduction by writer Anne Walmsley and Guyanese artist Stanley Greaves.

• A fundraising Christmas lunch is being held at the shop on Sunday December 5 from 1-4pm. For just £12 (children £5) guests will be able to browse the shop as well as tuck into traditional West Indian fare including saltfish fritters, jerk chicken, curry mutton, and rice and peas, along with other dishes and desserts. Tickets are available in advance. Contact New Beacon Books, 76 Stroud Green Road, N4. 020 7272 4889.