A. Sivanandan, director of the Institute of Race Relations, writes of Jan
Carew as 'renaissance man':

"Once in a while, a man or woman comes along who epitomises the best of the
worst of time - and shines out like a beacon to signal us to the further
shores of hope. Jan Carew is one of them. Born at a time when empire was at
its height and growing up when the pus of racism was seeping out from the
sores of capital, Jan heralded and helped to shape the cultural revolution
against colonialism and racism in poetry, painting, polemic and play. A
wandering minstrel uprooted and cast abroad by the imperial imperative, he
rooted himself wherever he was in the struggles of the people around him.
And he was in many places, wearing many faces, but always in the same cause:
freedom for the oppressed and downtrodden - teaching, writing, broadcasting,
engaging with mighty men and women such as Malcolm X and Claudia Jones,
Cheddi Jagan and Kwame Nkrumah, Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes."

'The Gentle Revolutionary' is available price six pounds (including surface
mail delivery) from: Institute of Race Relations, 2-6 Leeke Street, London,
WC1X 9HS, UK.