On the 23rd April, Joyce Trotman will be speaking at our weekly Tuesday evening meeting. Her topic will be Children of the Empire and she will be talking about her experience of growing up in a colony on the periphery of the British Empire, with a particular emphasis on the education she received.

A nonagenarian, Ms Trotman  was born in Georgetown, Guyana (then British Guiana) in 1927. All of her early schooling was in the British colony of Guiana. In 1955, after working as a primary school teacher, she travelled to England where she obtained a degree in Arts from London University and a Certificate in Education at the University of Durham.  Returning to Guyana in 1958, she was appointed a Senior Lecturer in English at the Government Training College and went on to become a Research Fellow for the University of Guyana.  She settled in England in 1972 and taught at the Scott Lidgett Boys’ Comprehensive School.  She obtained a M. Litt (Linguistics) from the University of Lancaster and was called to the Bar in 1984 on completion of part-time studies in law.  She is the author of ‘Proverbs of Guyana Explained’.

You can find some background on Joyce’s life on line, particularly here.