4 April 1928-28 May 2014
The broadcaster and longtime friend of Angelou recalls a ‘phenomenal’ poet, activist and raconteur – and singer
I came to know Maya Angelou in the early 1980s through Decca (Jessica) Mitford, the most leftwing Mitford sister, who was then living in California. This white aristocratic woman and the African American Maya proceeded, in the days of segregation, to drive together through the bitterly racially divided state of Arkansas. Upon being stopped and questioned by the police about their relationship, Decca would exclaim that Maya was her daughter. It was not really possible in age terms – Decca was 11 years older – and in racial terms? Decca simply said in her haughty voice: “These things just happened, my good man.”
In 1983, Decca called me to say that Maya needed somewhere to stay in London. I had met her several times while staying with Decca in California and reporting on the US electoral cycle in which that state played so crucial a part. I was rarely at home in London, so I was more than happy that she should take the house over. And take it over she did. So it was that she lived with me sporadically in attendance, in Kentish Town, for nearly two months – writing. Every evening she’d be down Leighton Road having a drink or two in the Irish pub, the Gloucester Arms. Some mornings, I’d come down and she’d be writing at the dining table. She’d suddenly get up and start singing at the top of her voice – there can’t have been a neighbour who couldn’t hear her. One day Salman Rushdie, still on the run from the fatwa against him, came for dinner. Maya relished the frisson as his Special Branch protection embedded themselves in my study.
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