Paradise lost

‘Jamaican history’, wrote Karl Marx, ‘is characteristic of the beastliness of a true Englishman’. In The Dead Yard, Ian Thomson laments the consequences, with the grim conclusion that the British planters cast Jamaica aside like a sucked orange once they had exploited their estates. Having shaped Jamaica’s past for good or ill, Britain has not helped to shape its future for the good. Today, blessed by nature with startling beauty and cursed by history with such startling evil, the country does not know whether to laugh or cry; and Thomson addresses this dilemma with depth and brio as well as despair. Often too with delight, as his ever observant eyes and ears pick up — with joyful-for-us results — the culture, colour and customs of the country. ‘You a Preacher Man?’, asks a market ‘higgler’ (trader), mistaking Thomson’s notebook for a bible.

When I say no, she tried to sell me a ‘roots’ drink, said to aid sexual potency.