Read the story behind the book here in the Birmingham Dispatch Click here.
About Jon BerryMy writing is about politics, sport and education – sometimes all three at once. Whether it’s my books, articles or blogposts, it’s unapologetically left wing. I hope some of it’s funny too. I’m always happy to hear readers’ reactions and I’ll respond unless you’re demonstrably in need of professional help.
My latest book Who Killed Oswald Grey? will be released in September, just before Black History Month. It revisits the case I first exposed in Brutish Necessity in 2022 and tells the story of the last Black man hanged in Britain in 1962.
Just prior to the release of the book, you will be able to hear a six-part podcast hosted by Genesis Radio Birmingham.
While the capital case of James Hanratty in the same year excited popular interest, that of Oswald Grey – prosecuted by the same team and hanged by the same executioner – is largely unknown. In the case of Hanratty , campaigning journalist Paul Foot wrote a compelling book, the tile of which I’ve amended. Paul’s son, Matt, has written a wonderful foreword to my work.
November 2025 will mark 60 years since the end of capital punishment in the UK, but the case of a bewildered young Jamaican, hastily disposed of by the state, is a miscarriage of justice that has never been fully addressed.
You’ll also find my blog here updated every month or so. As world events become increasingly difficult to parody, as reality outstrips satire, it’s become much more difficult to sustain! It’s a five-minute read about whichever current issue merits a poke in the eye. I’d love it if you were to respond in any intelligent way that you feel appropriate.
Last updated: October 2025.
September 2020. Cricket is in the headlines for the first time since the 2005 Ashes. But the focus is racism not runs or wickets. Azeem Rafiq’s treatment has ignited fierce debate about prejudice and class. From Azeem to Ashes charts the last, miserable days of Joe Root’s captaincy in early 2022 through to the T20 […]
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Zurich, 2 December 2010. Sepp Blatter pulls the name of Qatar from the envelope. The accusations fly and the recriminations start. And once it’s all sunk in, we start looking at maps and temperature charts and try to scrape together any fragments of knowledge about kingdoms in the Arabian desert. The Armchair Guide looks underneath […]
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Half-literate, his boyhood punctuated with petty crime, Oswald Grey was called from Jamaica to join his father in Birmingham in 1960. Within months he was back in custody for minor theft and from there he drifted to bad company. A single shot from a pistol stolen to impress his new-found allies killed a local newsagent […]
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In Teachers Undefeated Jon Berry found that teachers had not fallen for a reduced and meagre view of what children should be offered by schools. Now he writes about schools that have made a collective decision to abide by the principles of teaching and learning, confident that results will follow. Teachers, as well as parents […]
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You had one bath a week whether you needed it or not. You knew with iron certainty what was for tea on any given day of the week. There was every possibility that grown-ups, known to you or not, might clout you. But being a child of the 1950s endowed you with privileges that could […]
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It’s an embarrassing truth for many of us that it was only when professional football was eventually forced to close down that we recognised Covid 19 as a genuine threat to our way of life. And maybe just as shameful was the fact that once lockdown became normalised, it didn’t take long for chatter to […]
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Brutish Necessity is a tale from the past that casts a light on our lives today. Oswald Augustus Grey was a Jamaican immigrant. He was 20 years old when he was executed in November 1962 and 19 when the crime for which he was convicted took place. To talk to people who lived in the […]
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With 105 reviews at an average of 4.6 on Amazon , Hugging Strangers is a book for all true football fans. It helps if you’re one of the breed who follows your team through thin and thinner, but if you love the game, you’ll get what it’s about instantaneously. It speaks to all who love […]
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