Lawrence Scott

Life and career

Born in Trinidad on a sugarcane estate where his father was the manager for Tate & Lyle, Scott is a descendant of Trinidad's French and German creoles. "His father's side came from Germany in the 1830s and were called Schoener. His mother's family, the Lange dynasty, were French-descended and part of an established white Creole community."

Scott was educated at Boys' RC School, San Fernando, Trinidad (1950–54), and by the Benedictine monks at the Abbey School, Mount Saint Benedict, Tunapuna (1955–62), before leaving at the age of 19 for England. There he attended Prinknash Abbey, Gloucester, studying philosophy and theology (1963–67), St Clare's Hall Oxford, gaining a BA Hons. degree in English Language & Literature (1968–72), and Manchester University, earning a Certificate in Education, English & Drama (Distinction) in 1972–73.

Between 1973 and 2006 Scott worked as a teacher (of English and Drama) at various schools in London and in Trinidad, including Sedgehill, London; Thomas Calton Comprehensive, London; Presentation College, San Fernando, Trinidad; Aranguez Junior Secondary, Trinidad; Tulse Hill Comprehensive and Archbishop Tenison's, London. Between 1983 and 2006 he taught Literature and Creative Writing at City & Islington Sixth Form College, London.

In parallel to his teaching, Scott's career as a creative writer includes the publication since the 1990s of novels and collections of short stories. His stories have also been broadcast on BBC radio and have been anthologised internationally, notably in The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories and Our Caribbean, A Gathering of Lesbian & Gay Writing from the Antilles (Duke University Press). He has published poetry in several anthologies and journals, including Colours of a New Day: Writing for South Africa (Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), Caribbean New Voices 1 (Longman, 1995), Trinidad & Tobago Review, Cross/Cultures 60 (Editions Rodopi B.V. Amsterdam – New York, 2002), Agenda and Wasafiri. In addition he is the author of numerous essays, reviews and interviews on the work of other Caribbean writers, including Earl Lovelace and Derek Walcott.

Scott was a Writer-in-Residence at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in 2004. In 2006–09 he was a senior research fellow of The Academy for Arts, Letters, Culture and Public Affairs at the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT).

His academic research has included the Golconda Research/Writing Project, an oral history project in Trinidad. He has also researched extensively the life and times of Trinidad's 19th-century artist Michel-Jean Cazabon, which work informs his 2012 novel Light Falling on Bamboo.

Writing

In 1986, Scott's short story "The House of Funerals" won the Tom-Gallon Award. Since 1992 his published books include four novels, a collection of short stories and a work of non-fiction.

His first novel, Witchbroom (1992), was shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was abridged as a Book at Bedtime on BBC Radio 4 in 1993, abridged by Margaret Busby in eight episodes, produced by Marina Salandy-Brown and read by the author. A 25th-anniversary edition of Witchbroom, published by Papillote Press, was launched in Trinidad at PaperBased bookshop in Port-of-Spain on 18 March 2017, with a keynote address by Earl Lovelace and readings by Ken Ramchand, Barbara Jenkins and Marina Salandy-Brown. It was described by Trinidad and Tobago Newsday as "a breathtaking novel, filled with memorable characters and important history."

Of his 1994 story collection Ballad for the New World, Publishers Weekly said: "Scott ... has filled his collection of 12 short stories with all the rich nuances of the Caribbean, creating a convincing backdrop that allows even the most sedentary armchair traveler to visualize each tale's progression."

Scott's second novel, Aelred's Sin (1998), described by Raoul Pantin as "a fine and sensitive and compassionate book…a worthwhile contribution to the hallowed tradition of West Indian literature", won a Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book (Canada & Caribbean) in 1999. Night Calypso (2004), Scott's next novel, was described by Mike Phillips in The Guardian as "unique in being a serious, knowledgeable and beautifully written treatise about a little-known corner of experience and its relationship to a wider world", while Chris Searle in the Morning Star called it "an educative, startling and moving reading experience".

Scott's most recent novel, Light Falling on Bamboo (2012) was called "really a fascinating read" by Verdel Bishop in the Trinidad Express. Set in early 19th-century Trinidad, while the novel is a re-imagining of the life of the celebrated landscape painter Cazabon, according to Monique Roffey's review in The Independent Scott captures so much more. This novel shows us the dark 'truth of an age' in a small corner of the New World, once dependent on slave labour." Selwyn Cudjoe's review stated: "Lawrence Scott has written an important historical romance. [...] the loving attention that Scott devotes to detail, sensitivity to light and colour, and his determination to capture the many tones of his landscape and people give his romance a translucence and luminosity that is wondrous to behold. We owe him a debt of gratitude for offering us this way of seeing during this period in our history."

In 2015 Scott's collection of stories Leaving By Plane Swimming Back Underwater was published by Papillote Press. Alexander Lucie-Smith wrote in the Catholic Herald: "Scott’s writing resembles that fretwork familiar from decaying porches and window frames: intricate, almost rococo, and because Trinidad is such a multi-layered place, because nothing is simple, his style is perfectly suited to his subject. Scott comes nearest to any English language author I know to carrying off that difficult task of evoking a place that is real and at the same time completely other."