JOHN LINCOLN WILLIAMS

John L Williams's exciting and briskly written biography, CLR James: A Life Beyond the Boundaries, offers the perfect introduction to this titan of 20th-century politics and culture ― Tomiwa Owolade, The Sunday Times

​

This is an unrivalled storehouse of information about one of the twentieth century's most important revolutionaries. John Williams' sparkling biography counterpoints understanding of James' ideas with a richly-detailed account of his itinerant life and times ― Paul Gilroy

​

This is a passionate, timely and challenging portrait. CLR James was decades ahead of his time in challenging our thoughts about empire, colonialism, black history and, not least, in writing brilliantly about cricket. He finally has the biography his extraordinary influence deserves ― Barney Ronay

​

As John Williams states at the beginning of his absorbing biography, CLR James may have been born in the Victorian age but he belongs very much to ours . . . [The book] may be a single biography, but it describes multiple lives. ― New Statesman

​

A genius, a seducer . . . the firebrand author, historian and critic was a complex, fragile human being, as John L Williams's biography reveals. ― Observer

​

A fascinating biography -- Clive Davis, The Times

​

CLR James: A Life Beyond the Boundaries . . . is the full-scale, scrupulously researched, admiring but clear-eyed biography of the T&T intellectual icon that Caribbean readers have awaited for decades ― Trinidad & Tobago Express

​

It's a testament to this generous biography that the idiosyncratic personality of the great silver-tongued enthusiast comes shining through. ― Prospect

​

C.L.R.'s life has been chronicled many times in film, memoirs and biographies. This one . . . should rank as definitive. ― Tablet

​

This finely written and powerful book… Williams gives us the rawness and rare achievement of his life, and that is an invaluable contribution to now-times and future readers. ― Morning Star

​

A scholarly and vibrant biography . . . John L Williams has written a superb account of Trinidad's greatest intellectual ― Irish Times

​

CLR James: A Life Beyond the Boundaries is just that - an unsentimental work that draws back the veil of legend to expose the man of blood and bone. With great subtlety, intelligence and expansiveness, Williams gives us a view onto the thinker's groundbreaking ideas while rooting us firmly in the world that helped to shape him, a world living out the immediate aftershocks of colonialism. This is a profound, stirring and necessary book ― Esi Edugyan