IT’S AMAZING how the ear reacts to the sound bite.
All we needed to hear was that “Barbadians once had to eat rats” and all ears are perked up; one caller to talk radio even suggesting that Sir Hilary Beckles should be our next prime minister.
Thanks to Sir Hilary in his recent Leo Leacock Memorial Lecture, there’s now a sudden spurt of interest in the history of Barbados. But can we keep it up?
Do we have the time or the inclination to bother to read books by the same Hilary Beckles, Edward Stoute, Pedro Welch, Robert Morris, Richard Ligon, Henry Fraser, Velma Newton, Woodville Marshall, Karl Watson, Elombe Mottley, F.A. Hoyos, Warren Alleyne, Jill Sheppard, Richard B. Moore, Morris Greenidge, Trevor Marshall, Louis Lynch, Sean O’Callaghan, Patricia Symmonds, Andrea Stuart, Carlisle Burton, Colin and Margaret Hope, Sydney Simmons, Harold Hoyte, Glyne Murray and others?
Nothing would please the late doyen of talk radio, Vernon “Vernie” Hinds, more than to know that we are at last catching up with our history.
Or will we have to await another spurt when a historian explains why we so love pudding and souse?
We must also expect to hear that such things belong in the dustbin of history.
– CARL MOORE