Your Local Arena with the British Library: Beyond the Bassline

“Ska was pure joy, so was 2-Tone”

Read long-standing Arena producer Anthony Wall’s reflections on Rudies Come Back or The Rise and Rise of 2-TONE.

Anthony Wall spent his early years in the east end of London. He studied at King’s College Cambridge. In 1974 he joined BBC radio as a studio manager. The same year he became the rock critic of the Morning Star and was the first journalist to interview Bob Marley for a national newspaper. Wall moved into television in 1978 and soon joined Arena, becoming one of the core directors/producers (1978-85) and then Series Editor from 1985 to 2018. He has won three BAFTAs, with numerous nominations and other awards from all over the world. His project Night and Day – The Arena Time Machine, a 24-hour evocation of a single day in the life of the planet, made entirely from the Arena archive, screened at the 2019 San Francisco Film Festival, where Wall and Arena received the Mel Novikoff Award, one of the festival’s highest honours, for their ‘contribution to cinema’.

Rhoda Dakar began her musical career in 1979 as lead vocalist with all-female 2-Tone band, The Bodysnatchers. She went on to record with The Specials, The Special AKA and Madness, along with her solo work. She has seven gold albums and two silver covering these and other recording projects. As a collaborator, Rhoda has worked on singles with the Dub Pistols and The Interrupters, alongside Rancid’s Tim Armstrong. As a respected DJ she has toured with UB40, The Selecter and The Specials. She is also a writer of sleevenotes, most recently for Trojan Records. At the end of May this year, Rhoda released an album called Version Girlon Sunday Best Records. Official chart positions were No.1 on the Indie Breakthrough Chart, No.2 on the Indie Album Chart and No.10 on the Album Sales Chart. In addition, Rhoda is a patron of the Music Venue Trust and a director of Music Venue Properties.

As well as being a best-selling writer of both children's and adult novels, Charlie Higson is one of the most successful comedy actors and writers of the last thirty years. From 1980-86 The Higsons, fronted by Charlie, put out a series of singles and albums on 2-Tone Records. From 1984 Charlie was in partnership with his friend Paul Whitehouse and with him Charlie wrote, co-produced and performed the BBC sketch show series The Fast Show, gaining a cult following. Charlie has also created well-loved characters for Harry Enfield and worked with hit comedy partnership Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. He has written for radio and penned six novels including, most recently, Whatever Gets You Through the Night (2022). Charlie's most recent acting work includes Grantchester and Series 3 of Broadchurch, the latter going on to win Best Crime Drama at the NTAs.

Jeff Perks wears two hats –artist and filmmaker. He graduated from the National Film and Television School in 1978. He has produced and directed films for the BBC’s Omnibus and Arena programmes on artists, cartoonists, punk bands and women comediennes. When Channel Four started he formed Riverfront Pictures and went on to make over forty films for the new channel. As an artist, his work has appeared at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Battersea Arts Centre and his first one-man show was at Stockport Art Gallery. His current exhibition John Bull, a collaboration with Michael Rosen, is running at The Green Man Gallery.

Birmingham-born Daniel Rachel is a former musician-turned-award-winning and bestselling author whose previous works include: Isle of Noises: Conversations with Great British Songwriters (a Guardian and NME Book of the Year), Walls Come Tumbling Down: the music & politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge and co-writer of Ranking Roger's autobiography I Just Can't Stop It: My Life in The Beat. In 2021, Daniel was a guest curator of 2 Tone Lives & Legacies exhibition as part of Coventry Cultural City 2021 and curated the anniversary edition of the Selecter’s debut album Too Much Pressure. His latest book, Too Much Too Young: the 2 Tone Records Story was a Times / Sunday Times Book of the Year.

Helen Thomas is a writer of Sierra Leonean and Irish heritage who was born in London. She moved to Cornwall over twenty years ago after receiving her DPhil in English Literature. In 2020, she distributed Black Agents Provocateurs: 250 Years of Black British Writing, History and Law, 1770-2020 as a free, 500-page e-book to celebrate Black History Month, and in 2022 she published 1562, a volume of poetry voicing the fictional lives of six black women from six ports in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Britain. Since then Helen has been experimenting with poetry and poetic plays, writing work that fuses literary genres and highlights the experience of black migrants in Britain as well as their contributions to British culture. In 2023, she was commissioned to co-create a play with young people in Plymouth as part of the With Flying Colours and Beyond Face Theatre Company partnership. She is currently working on two poetic plays and a new collection of poems.

‘Always The Mix and Blend’ by Malika Booker

Malika Booker is a poetry Lecturer at Manchester University, a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage and the founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. Her first poetry collection Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre 2014 prize for first full collection. She is published with the poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body (2017). Malika hosts and curates New Caribbean Voices, Peepal Tree Press’s literary podcast. A cave Canem Fellow, and inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company, Malika was awarded the Cholmondeley Award (2019) and won The Forward Poetry Prize for Best Single Poem (2020).

‘In Your Young Days, for The Specials’ by Richard Georges

Richard Georges is a writer of essays, fiction, and three collections of poetry. His most recent book, Epiphaneia (Out-Spoken), won the 2020 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and his first book, Make Us All Islands (Shearsman), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Richard is a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study and serves as the first Virgin Islands Poet Laureate. He works in higher education and lives on Tortola with his wife and children.

‘Tone’ by Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett is a writer, performer and educator based in London. UK poetry slam champion and FLUPP International Poetry Slam Winner (Rio), his work has included bilingual performances in Bilbao and Madrid, in addition to UK-wide commissions. His poem, ‘From the Log Book’, was projected onto the façade of St. Paul’s Cathedral and broadcast as a commemorative art installation, Where Light Falls, in 2019. His play, Safest Spot in Town, was performed at the Old Vic and aired on BBC Four. Selah, his poetry collection, was published in 2017. Keith was selected for the International Literary Showcase by Val McDermid as one of ten most outstanding LGBT writers in the UK. He has judged the Polari Prize, the Foyle Young Poets Award, and is the Europe and Canada regional judge for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2021. Having recently completed his PhD at Birkbeck University, he is finishing his first novel and teaches on the Creative Writing MA. 

‘Let Them Say’ by Hannah Lowe

Hannah Lowe is a writer and academic in London, UK. Her first poetry collection Chick (Bloodaxe, 2013) won the Michael Murphy Memorial Award for Best First Collection and was short-listed for the Forward, Aldeburgh and Seamus Heaney Best First Collection Prizes. Her second collection is Chan (Bloodaxe, 2016).  In 2014, she was named as one of 20 Next Generation British poets, an accolade awarded once a decade. She has also published four chapbooks: The Hitcher (Rialto 2012); R x (sine wave peak, 2013); Ormonde (Hercules Editions 2014). (2016) and most recently, The Neighbourhood. (Outspoken Press, 2019). She has been Writer in Residence at Keats House and currently lectures in Creative Writing at Brunel University.

‘History Swirls’ by Maureen Roberts

Maureen Roberts (MA in Creative Writing, Goldsmiths College) is a Senior Engagement & Learning Officer at London Metropolitan Archives. She is a Trustee of the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton, London and is also Operations Manager of the Ithaca College London Centre study abroad programme, working as an Administrator and lecturer. From 2010 to 2013, she was Curator of the Keats House Festival, and she was also previously the organiser of the Ithaca College Martin Luther King Scholars London Programme. In 2012, Maureen Roberts represented Grenada as part of the Southbank Centre’s Poetry Parnassus, which was part of London’s Cultural Olympiad. A published author and teacher, her poems have been widely anthologised, including on the Caribbean O level exam syllabus. Maureen is the Founder of the Archives Download group, which encourages BAME participation in archives.

‘The Rudeboy Returns’ by Roger Robinson

Roger Robinson is a writer who has performed worldwide. He is the winner of the 2019 T S Eliot Prize and the 2020 RSL Ondaatje Prize. His latest collection, A Portable Paradise, was a New Statesman Book of the Year. He is an alumnus of The Complete Works and was shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize and the Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, has been commended by the Forward Poetry Prize and is currently shortlisted for the 2020 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. Roger has received commissions from The National Trust, the BBC, The National Portrait Gallery, the V&A Museum and Theatre Royal Stratford East among others. His workshops have been shortlisted for the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries and were also a part of the Webby Award-winning Barbican’s Can I Have A Word. He is co-founder of Spoke Lab and the international writing collective Malika’s Kitchen. He is the lead vocalist and lyricist for King Midas Sound and has recorded solo albums with Jahtari Records.