About the author
Barbara Makeda Blake-Hannah (born 5 June 1941) is a Jamaican author and journalist known for her promotion of Rastafari culture and history. She is also a politician, filmmaker, festival organiser and cultural consultant. She was one of the first black people to be an on-camera reporter and interviewer on British television when, in 1968, she was employed by Thames Television's evening news programme Today. Hannah was sacked because viewers complained about having a black woman on screen. She later returned to Jamaica and was an independent senator in the Parliament of Jamaica from 1984 to 1987. == Early life and father == In Jamaica, Blake-Hannah had read television news bulletins and had written for a monthly news magazine managed by her father, Evon Blake, who founded the Press Association of Jamaica. == TV and journalism career in Britain == She arrived in Britain in 1964 to work as an extra on the film A High Wind in Jamaica (1965). In the next few years she wrote for The Caribbean Times, West Indian World, The Sunday Times, Queen and Cosmopolitan.
