Landeg White obituary

My friend and former colleague Landeg White, who has died at his home in Portugal aged 77, was an academic and poet, one of the most versatile and prolific of the Africanists who began work in the post-independence era.

He was born in Taff’s Well, near Cardiff, the son of Reginald White, known as REO White, who became principal of the Scottish Baptist College, and Gwyneth (nee Landeg). After schooling at Rutherglen Academy in Lanarkshire and Birkenhead Institute on the Wirral, Landeg graduated in English from Liverpool University then began work teaching English literature at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad, in 1964. A product of his time there was his critical introduction to the work of VS Naipaul (1975).