Andrea levy author biography

Andrea Levy came from a background that would have made it hard to predict for her a career as a universally lauded, award-winning novelist. Born in London to Jamaican parents – her father had arrived in Britain on the Empire Windrush in 1948, her mother followed soon after – Andrea was the youngest of four children.

In her own words, she was an ordinary working class girl: ‘I lived on a council estate in north London. I went to a local school. Spoke like a good cockney. I played outside with all the white kids who lived around my way – rounders, skipping and hide and seek.

I ate a lot of sweets.

Andrea levy author biography wikipedia

Watched a lot of television: Coronation Street, Emergency Ward 10. Loved the Arsenal. Hated Tottenham Hotspur.’

Yet after starting a creative writing class at the City Lit as a hobby in her mid thirties, she would transform herself from someone who had not read a book until the age of 23, and did not think of herself as black, into someone who read excessively as she moved tow