AT 83, T&T-born historian, novelist, dramatist and activist Dr Ron Ramdin is using his voice to disrupt a long-standing myth.
Ramdin’s newest book, Robeson’s Othello: The Play’s the Thing, revisits one of the most powerful and politically charged moments in 20th century theatre — when Paul Robeson, a towering black performer, took on Shakespeare’s most complex role.
“An artist must take sides,” Robeson once famously declared.
As the 50th anniversary of Robeson’s death approaches in January 2026, Ramdin is inviting the world to look again at Robeson, at Othello, and at who really gets to tell history’s stories.
“Should we permit tradition or seek truth?” Ramdin asked during his interview with Kitcharee.
“I felt compelled to write this.”
Robeson, a former lawyer, singer and actor, stepped into the role of Othello not as a novelty or token, but as a revolutionary. His 1959 performance at Stratford-upon-Avon — his third time playing the part — wasn’t simply a return to the stage. It was defiance. A declaration that black voices belonged in the heart of the canon, not on the fringes.
In a time when black actors were still routinely sidelined in classical theatre, his portrayal of Othello stood as direct defiance of racialised casting norms.
In Robeson’s Othello, Ramdin tells that story with the urgency and insight of someone who understands exactly what it means to fight for space in institutions that were never built for you.
An island boy in the British Library
Ramdin’s journey started in Union Village, Marabella, far from the leather-bound corridors of British academia. He was shaped by hardship and hunger — not only for food, but for knowledge and a voice.
“I was born on Union Park Road and grew up in Union Village,” Ramdin revealed. “The memories that shaped my early life which have strong echoes still are: poverty, social injustice, educational deprivation, unemployment and playing first class football in the green Texaco Star shirt at Guaracara Park.”
Ramdin migrated to England at 19 and landed his first job in a library. That first step became a vocation. Ramdin went on to spend his entire career in three of Britain’s most prestigious libraries, eventually finding his “spiritual-intellectual home” in the British Library in London.
“When I first walked into the famous Round Reading Room, I was overwhelmed. I felt calm, and somehow liberated in that enclosed space,” he continued. “As a reader, I learned that those who had read and written there included Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Lenin, Mahatma Gandhi. Being there felt right.”
It also felt like destiny: “Over the years, increasingly, it became my ‘spiritual-intellectual home’, the space where my literary-publishing odyssey began, a sojourn which, to date, amounts to 17 books spanning six genres, including a play and an original philosophical essay. One of my claims to fame is that I had used the famous Round Reading Room more often than any other reader!”
A different DNA
But Ramdin wasn’t content to be a passive observer. He became the first black shop steward at the British Museum and later, the first secretary of the Whitley Council when the British Library was formed. His leadership in overwhelmingly white institutions was not symbolic; it was seismic.
“My early writings as a short story writer were transformed by the stark reality of being a black person, indeed trade union leader of 90% white members,” he recalled. “Industrial prose became integral. I used more militant language. As a radical, I became a legendary figure.”
His speeches and writings caught the attention of influential publishers, one of whom dubbed him “The Lenin of Museum Street”.
“That radicalism and being a well-known speaker on various platforms in universities, libraries, schools, and giving interviews on radio and television definitely shaped my writings and extended the genres in which I wrote,” he added. “I coined the phrase: ‘Difference is the DNA of social relations’. My activism and passion for writing continued to cross literary boundaries. In this process, what I was working on had the effect of working upon me.”
Paul Robeson and
the Play’s the Thing
In Robeson’s Othello, Ramdin examines the life and final major performance of one of his greatest influences. The book contains an original dramatic presentation, Playing Their Parts, based on conversations Ramdin had with actor Sam Wanamaker, Robeson’s co-star in a 1959 production of Othello.
Robeson had played the role three times, but this was the pinnacle. The book unpacks not only Robeson’s performance but the weight of his social, cultural, and political presence.
“In any assessment of Robeson’s life, we should be mindful that he was unequivocal about the relationship between identity, art and society,” Ramdin said. “‘The artist must take sides.’ That was his abiding commitment as, for the last time, he aspired to achieve acting immortality as William Shakespeare’s Othello.”
Coinciding with the publication of the book is the recent release of PBS’ Masters special broadcast of Ramdin’s historic Paul Robeson interview with American film director St Clair Bourne. The message is clear. Robeson’s legacy is not a relic of the past. It’s a template for the future.
“An international name in his lifetime, today Robeson is hardly known among a new generation,” he lamented. “Yet, he is increasingly being appreciated by serious students as the monumental figure that he was — the ‘Great Forerunner’ in the campaign for civil rights in America, as well as a leading voice for freedom from oppression everywhere.”
His relentless pen
From The Griot’s Tale (translated in Cuba by Arte y Literatura) to Or Not to Be: The True Story of William Shakespeare, Ramdin’s output is relentless. His next novel is already underway, and his closing lines in Ode to Seat Number Sixty read like both prophecy and promise:
While I interweave tapestries, infusing the music and rhythm of human experience into storytelling, challenged by the need to create the next chapter on my literary odyssey, here, at my ‘Seat of Learning,’ I am ever-hopeful that my relentlessly moving pen will, dear reader, prove to be mightier than the sword, as I bring into being a new work evoking the essential truth of art.
To young Caribbean thinkers now forging their paths across the world, Ramdin offered these words.
“Hard work, relentless learning, self-respect and respect for others is what I would pass on. My hope is that they would persevere with passion as they engage with their work. There are no second chances in life. Make this moment count,” he concluded.
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