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'Brixton bard': the novelist Alex Wheatle dies aged 62

The Guardian

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March 21, 2025

The British writer Alex Wheatle, the author of books including East of Acre Lane and the Crongton series, has died aged 62.

- Ella Creamer

'Brixton bard': the novelist Alex Wheatle dies aged 62

"It is with great sadness to inform you that Alex Wheatle, our 'Brixton Bard', sadly passed away on Sunday 16 March 2025 after his fight with prostate cancer", his family wrote in a statement on the author's Instagram page.

"For so many writers like me, Alex Wheatle was a lodestar," said the critic Colin Grant. "His writing was sharp, clear-eyed and generous."

Wheatle traced his interest in writing to his time in prison. After being arrested during the Brixton uprising of April 1981, Wheatle spent four months in prison, where he read CLR James, Charles Dickens, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes and John Steinbeck among other authors handed to him by his cellmate. "Whatever I achieve in this old writing game is down to the conversion I experienced under Simeon in Wormwood Scrubs," he wrote in the Guardian in 2021.

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