Caryl Phillips: ‘It was Britain that made me a writer’
The New York-based Kittitian-British author on why he set his new novel in the immigrant community of 1960s Notting Hill, the pitfalls of celebrity, and how he never misses a Leeds United match
Caryl Phillips, 66, was born in Saint Kitts and raised in Leeds. The author of 12 novels, including 1993’s Booker-shortlisted Crossing the River, he lives in New York and for the past 20 years has taught creative writing at Yale University. He and I met on Portobello Road in Notting Hill, the location of his new novel, Another Man in the Street, in which a young West Indian finds himself collecting rent for a 1960s slumlord.
Tell us how this book began life.
A few years ago I was wandering around these streets, thinking it doesn’t look like the place I used to wander around as a student: no reggae shops, no guys on the corner smoking dope. It’s where Beckham lives! David Cameron’s got a house here. I began to think about how Notting Hill changed, and the nature of that change, and my own relationship to this gentrified, almost theme-park area of London that years ago meant something entirely different to me.
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