[1] Donald Lloyd Hinds was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on 13 January 1934 and grew up in a village in the parish of St. Thomas with his grandparents, his mother and stepfather having migrated to Britain.
Receiving an advance of £100 — the equivalent at the time of eight weeks' wages as a bus conductor — Hinds was emboldened to leave his job with London Transport to concentrate on his writings.
[1][6] "One of the great works of journalism to have come out of the Jamaican-British encounter",[7] the book was reissued in 2001 by Bogle-L'Ouverture Press and, in the words of Anne Walmsley: "Journey to an Illusion remains a classic of the West Indian immigrant experience.
[10] In February 1971 he chaired and introduced CAM's public session on "Contemporary African Poetry", at which Femi Fatoba from Nigeria and Cosmo Pieterse from Namibia participated with their Caribbean peers.
[14] Describing the book as "an absorbing hybrid of fiction and reportage" in a Financial Times review, Ian Thomson says: "Mother Country, a work of documentary authenticity and rare narrative verve, takes us to the heart of the West Indian immigrant experience in postwar London.