“Merriman-Labor’s searing satire of the British was not well received”

In 1904, an accomplished young Krio man from a middle-class family in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, set sail from the west African coast to London.

Aged just 26, his aim was to make his mark on the literary world. Augustus Merriman-Labor had every reason to be optimistic. He was hard-working, gifted and successful, with a rising profile in his home country, and had assured him that his colour would be no obstacle there,” and he could “go anywhere, wherever his merits... will take him”.