Mmmmmmm, ‘Everything is Everything’ or, as a fellow Jamaican, born in Paddington growing up in North London, I remember hearing it as everyting-a-everyting – which, loosely translated, means what will be, will be.

So it is with this very engaging, deeply personal and surprisingly revealing memoir from an increasingly familiar face, namely Clive Myrie.
Born in Bolton, to Windrush generation parents in the year 1964, Clive would regularly devour all of the newspapers he delivered during his paper-round as a young kid, fuelling his dreams of becoming a journalist.

Clive’s working-class parents had moved from Jamaica’s scorching sunshine to the sleet and slush of North West England, specifically Bolton’s blustery winds. Clive’s early love of words and reading motivated him to study Law at Sussex University before landing a place on the BBC’S Trainee Journalism Scheme. He explains how he was inspired by broadcasters Alan Whicker and Trevor McDonald and fell in love with the prospect of reporting the news from all around the world.
Clive shares how his family history influenced his view of the world. How his great grandfather helped to build the Panama Canal and how another family elder fought in the First World War before becoming a prominent police detective in Jamaica.

Working for the British establishment (represented here as the BBC) and, when working abroad, accommodating international expectations requires a skillful balancing of who Clive is versus who he is expected to be. This duality and ability to manage it appears to be part of Clive’s DNA i.e. intrinsic to who he is. Yet, even within this delicate balancing act, Clive finds a way of adding his very own perspective, if not flavour. Specifically, reflecting on how being black has impacted his views and his own colourful experiences as an outsider.
With a clear pride in his roots, mixed with a professional determination not to be completely defined by his background, Clive embraces the challenges of race, class and occupational threats to his own life, with grit, compassion and dignity. 

This memoir balances an overflowing love for community with a chronicle of manifest hatred demonstrated by some of those in power, to share one journalists surviving hope in our collective capacity to tip those scales.

Whether through the stoicism of our Windrush generation, or the courageous battles being fought by those in bomb blasted townships, Clive’s voice emerges here as both a measured messenger of tragedy and a harbinger of hope.

After all… everything is everything!!!