Jeffrey Green


Jeffrey P. Green is a British historian and writer, who has been particularly active in researching and documenting the Black British experience.

Early life

Jeffrey Green was born in 1944 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, and grew up in London.

Career

Green worked for Grindlays Bank both in London and Uganda, and as an export manager for British manufacturers. He has worked as an independent historian for more than three decades. His notable work on Black British history includes research into the life of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor that culminated in the 2011 biography Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a Musical Life. Green edited trumpeter Leslie Thompson' autobiography, first published in 1985 and reissued as Swing from a Small Island - The Story of Leslie Thompson by Northway Publications in 2009.
Green has written more than 30 articles for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Other publications to which he has contributed include The Oxford Companion to Black British History, The Grove Dictionary of Jazz, The Journal of Caribbean History, Black Music Research Journal, Black Perspective in Music, New Community, Storyville and History Today.
In History Today in 2000, he argued that the black presence in the UK before 1940 had largely been ignored by historians. He is a regular participant in seminars and conferences.
Green has also been active in trying to trace fugitive slaves who escaped from the US to the UK.
In 2015 he was nominated for a Grammy for work on the 44-CD boxed set with two books, Black Europe, which rescued recordings made in Europe by people of African descent prior to 1928.
Green lives in East Grinstead, Sussex.
A collection of Green's research papers, reference material, and papers of the Barbour-James family that he acquired after the death of Amy Barbour-James, are held at the Black Cultural Archives.

Publications

Books