Our reading group is celebrating Black History month by focusing on some fantastic black writers over October.  

In last week’s session our service users explored some of the work of E. B Braithwaite. Born in Guyana in 1912, but educated at Cambridge, Braithwaite found he could not get a job in his field of Physics. He therefore became a teacher at a school in the East End of London, writing about his experiences in his book, To Sir, With Love. 

We also looked into the work of Lemn Sissay, who experienced immense hardship with the foster care system in his youth, and into the story of Dido Belle, who was a mixed-race woman raised in an aristocratic household in the mid 1700s. 

Dido Belle and her cousin Elizabeth Murray

These topics invited lively discussion amongst our service users about the way societal attitudes towards race, childcare and family had changed throughout their lifetimes.