It's only in retrospect that I've realised how prevalent sport is within the A Song in a Strange Land. I've not yet ascertained what can be inferred from that. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that if I pointed out the greater significance that sport can play in life, that a million people would have preceded me in doing so. It can be an arena to play out our tribal battles, to live vicariously through our sporting heroes, as a basis of inspiration for our own sporting endeavours.
The book A Song in a Strange Land is not just an exercise in vanity, nor in masochism, given that it's never pleasant to revisit some of the most painful experiences in your life, nor is it just to revisit my 1970s school years. It is at least partly a walk through the thought processes of an adolescent, and particularly one who descends into a negative spiral, having once experienced a relatively normal upbringing. It seeks to shine a light on how some young people can descend into self-destructiveness, and of course how they can come back from that. Being a Christian, it should be no surprise to anyone that I see personal redemption as first and foremost in that restoration, but there is also a role for education and hopefully wisdom, all of which I profoundly believe are linked together.
I began my eulogy to my father that I read in St Mary's Church in Roxby, North Lincolnshire in September 2010, I started it with the old Mark Twain adage that when he was fourteen, he thought his father knew nothing, but by the time he was twenty-one, he was amazed how much his father had learned in seven years. I guess it goes without saying that any son or daughter could fill a book with what they don't know about their parents. The book I wrote some time ago about Dad, (and yes, yes, the next one should be completed within the year), contained at least something of what I did know about him, and at least one of those things I wrote was wrong.
I grew up in Lincolnshire, a part of England whose famous sons include John and Charles Wesley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, the poet, John Smith of Pocahontas fame, and many more. It’s not a hugely diverse part of the country, and was even less so in the sixties and seventies. My father, who was from Dominica in the Caribbean did something quite unusual in bringing us up in the English countryside where my mother was raised, rather than an urban area, where most of the West Indian community are based. Lincolnshire is home to Lincoln Cathedral, once believed by locals to be the tallest building in the world.
Back in the mid noughties on the Andrew Marr show, the bigraphy of Sir Christopher Meyer, UK ambassador to the United States during the Iraq War, was being discussed. His book was being serialised in one of the broadsheets, so when the newspapers were being reviewed, one commentator summarised his biography to Andrew Marr as 'why everything I ever did was right and how, if they had listened to me at the time, we wouldn't be in this mess'. That summary greatly amused me at the time, to the extent that I can recount it over a decade later, but since then, it's given me food for thought.
There's a great documentary film on the Guardian web site at the moment that touches on very similar territory to the second book.