During the early part of the 19th century, the author Garry Glave's great-great-grandfather, Stephen Glave, was born and raised in Yorkshire, England and in 1832 he travelled to Jamaica to work for the British government. There he met his future wife, Katherine Witty Waugh, who was a Black Jamaican-born woman. Garry's great-great-grandmother was a free woman, but her ancestors had been slaves, brought from Africa to Jamaica via Britain's Transatlantic Slave Trade.
By the late 1830s, the British government had abolished slavery in Jamaica and around that time, Charles Woofe Glave, who was the author's great-grandfather, was born in Manchester, Jamaica.
During the 1860s, Garry's great-grandaunt moved to England and she was followed, at the outbreak of World War One (1914-18), by his two distant cousins who joined the British Army.
After the Second World War, the author's grandparents and parents, like many from the Caribbean, left Jamaica for Britain. And they settled in London during the post-war years (1950s and 1960s). Moreover, at around the same time, the United Kingdom granted independence to Jamaica, the birthplace of the author's parents.
Today, in the 21st century, many of his family members reside in Britain, including his second cousin who is the former lead singer of the pop group Boney M.
