Returning to Paradise? Part 1: by David R. Bradshaw (1976)
This book’s sub-title is: ‘A Memoir of a Young Afro-Caribbean Man’s re-migration from the UK, to Teach at the University of the West Indies (UWI), and Raise his Family, in 1980s Barbados – Part 1: up to 1984’.
It is the fourth volume of the author’s memoirs. The first, entitled Growing up BAREFOOT under Montserrat’s sleeping Volcano (published in the UK in 2010), dealt with his earliest childhood until he (aged 8) and his younger brother, John, set sail from their native Caribbean island for England to join their parents already living there. Swimming without mangoes (published in 2013 by Hobnob Press, Wiltshire, UK) is the second volume and continues the story of what happens to the author after arriving in the Wiltshire railway town of Swindon and how he manages to survive, at home and in the classroom, in unfamiliar surroundings during his schooldays there.
Fledging and Learning to Fly (published in 2017 by Kingston University Press, Surrey, UK) is the third volume in the series and deals with what happens when the author ‘fledges’ from his home nest in Swindon to go off into the wider world. It covers his student days at Kingston Law School and then Trinity Hall, Cambridge University, prior to reading for the Bar on his way to becoming a Barrister in London. It also deals with his inter-racial marriage to his former schoolmate, Philomena, followed by swift parenthood, and how it was for one Black, working-class, young man and his more privileged wife to start trying to ‘make a go’ of life together in 1970s English society.
This latest book takes up that history. It treats of what happens after the author emigrates from the UK to take up a post at the University of the West Indies (UWI), at a campus in the ‘Paradise Island’ of Barbados in the Caribbean – with Philomena, and their then two small children in tow (one only six weeks old). Will the relocation prove to be ‘Heaven on Earth’ for the author and his family – or will their tropical experiences prove that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions? Read this book to find out.