Delia Jarrett-Macauley | Granta

Delia Jarrett-Macauley

Delia Jarrett-Macauley was born in Hertfordshire to Sierra Leonian parents. She is a writer, broadcaster and academic, and is the author of The Life of Una Marson, 1905-65, a biography of the BBC’s first black programme-maker. She has presented features on Radio 3, and has taught at Leeds University and Birkbeck College. She lives in Clapham, south London.

Publications

Moses, Citizen And Me

Delia Jarrett-Macauley

When Julia flies in to war-scarred Sierra Leone from London, she is apprehensive about seeing her Uncle Moses for the first time in twenty years. But nothing could have prepared her for her encounter with her eight-year-old cousin, Citizen, a former child soldier, and for the shocking truth of what he has done. Driven by a desire to understand Citizen, Julia takes the disturbed child into the ‘bush’. There they meet other child soldiers, and a story-teller, Bemba G., who provides a safe haven for them all and strives to return them to childhood through play, love, story-telling and performance. As Julia gradually rediscovers Africa, the different generations of her family rediscover their bonds. And then Bemba G. directs the child soldiers in a version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, with powerful effect.