Black Britains

What a person's life might mean sounds like a rather grandiose inquiry, yet this is the question posed with characteristic skill in Foreigners. The lives in question belong to three black Britons: Francis Barber, a young Jamaican man who was 'given' to Samuel Johnson; Randolph Turpin, a boxer who became the first black middleweight champion of the world in 1951; and David Oluwale, a Nigerian who was hounded to death by policemen in Leeds in 1969. All three led lives that were characterised, at least initially, by success and that ended with dereliction. Oluwale's is the most haunting story, with Caryl Phillips's technique of blending facts and fiction at its most effective. The graffiti on a Leeds wall that reverberates through the story - 'Remember Oluwale' - will prove impossible to disregard.