Andrea Levy (1956-2019)

BBC News 2019

Andrea Levy was born in London on 7 March 1956. She and her siblings grew up on a council estate by the Arsenal football stadium and were the only black family there at the time. Her dad came to England on the Empire Windrush, something that Levy found out by accident when a television programme came on and her father casually mentioned that he had been on the boat.

Levy love Islington where she lived and worked. She said about London:

“Everything I love and hold dear is here”

She grew up cut off from her Jamaican inheritance and, at first, felt like an imposter when it came to belonging to Black Culture. In an attempt to understand her own experience, Levy wrote stories. She felt it was important for every British person to be able to know about the often invisible history of slavery and colonisation. Through her own words about her life, the books she wrote, and the stories her friends tell about her, she seems like someone who was both ordinary and extraordinary, and who knew that by telling stories about ordinary people, they - and we - become extraordinary.

When she died, of cancer aged 62, her husband wrote:

“Through her body of work she has made a small but real difference to Britain’s view of itself. Right to the end of her life her down-to-earth modesty meant I was never sure if she quite understood or totally accepted that fact. I just hope that she did.”