Bageye at the Wheel

Bageye at the Wheel is a 2012 memoir by British author Colin Grant, giving a semi-autobiographical account of 1970s' Luton through the portrayal of his father Clinton "Bageye" Grant, a Jamaican migrant to the UK. The story itself is one of observation of a period whereby a provincial town of immigrants (a mixture of Irish, Asian and Caribbean) and their larger families congregate, yet try to assimilate into a British culture that had not yet been accustomed to diversity among ethnicities. Nevertheless, this indifference to a somewhat unforgiving environment is neatly summed up by the unwavering, independent "Bageye", who refuses to blend in but rather stand out as a linchpin for the so-called "Windrush generation". According to the review in The Guardian: "In its toughness and tenderness, as well as its sensuous and telling details, Bageye at the Wheel is a father memoir that deserves to be as celebrated as Ian Jack's essay 'Finished With Engines' or Gary Imlach's My Father and Other Working-Class Football Heroes.