Cy Grant

Who was Cy Grant?

Cy Grant was a Guyanese actor, musician, writer and poet. In the 1950s, he became the first black person to be featured regularly on television in the United Kingdom, mostly due to his appearances on the BBC current affairs show Tonight.

Following service in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, Grant worked as an actor and singer, before establishing the Drum Arts Centre in the 1970s. In the 1980s, he was appointed director of Concord Multicultural Festivals. A published poet and author of several books, including his 2007 memoir Blackness and the Dreaming Soul, Grant was made an Honorary Fellow of Roehampton University in 1997, and a member of the Scientific and Medical Network in 2001. In 2008, he assisted in the founding of an online archive to trace and commemorate Caribbean airmen of the Second World War.

A father of four children, Grant lived with his wife, Dorith, in Highgate, London.