WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
‘I cried like a baby the first week I was here’
PETER MASON is captivated by snapshots that build up a strong feel of what it was like to live and work in those now far-off times, when strong unionisation and an enlightened attitude from LT nurtured camaraderie
MEMORY LANE: (L to R) Bus conductor Agatha Claudette Hart, 1962; Food Production Croydon, 1971
[Images copyright TfL from London Transport Museum’s collection] 
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
Legacies: London Transport’s Caribbean Workforce
London Transport Museum, Covent Garden
WHEN London Transport had a recruitment problem in the late 1950s and early ’60s, it turned to the Caribbean to find bus conductors, Tube station staff, maintenance workers and canteen assistants.
The initial target was Barbados, though recruiting sergeants were later sent to Jamaica and Trinidad, as well as some of the smaller islands such as Grenada and Dominica. Around 6,000 people were directly signed up from the Caribbean between 1956 and 1970, and many more came over on their own account, taking up work on the Tubes and buses once they arrived.
Now a new exhibition at the London Transport Museum is celebrating the contribution those willing hands made to London life – while also looking at the bittersweet impact of emigration on their own existence.
More from this author
PETER MASON is wowed (and a little baffled) by the undeniably ballet-like grace of flamenco
PETER MASON is surprised by the bleak outlook foreseen for cricket’s future by the cricketers’ bible
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
PETER MASON applauds a thought-provoking study of the relationship between a grieving woman and her photographer
