Avril Nanton

“I’M a rarity,” giggles Avril Nanton, the animated Islington tour guide who gave her first of two Black history of Islington tours this week.

There are not, it turns out, many tour guides giving tours about black history, but she has found the demand is there.

“I am so busy”, she told our supplement, describing how some months she does daily tours every day of the week. Ms Nanton, 65, said she never cancels whatever the weather and always soldiers on.

“I have everything in my bag. It weighs a tonne,” she said, before listing its contents. “It gives you backache.”

For Ms Nanton, who does walks all over the capital and wrote London’s first black history book in 2021, Black London, the Islington tour has special meaning to her – she is a former De Beauvoir Primary School student who grew up in Ockendon Road of Essex Road.

Her book has its own maps and walking suggestions alongside 120 entries about fascinating greater and lesser known London landmarks, meaning anyone can pick up a copy and set off.

Ms Nanton trained as a tour guide in 2016 at the Clerkenwell and Islington Guiding Association after losing her job as an office manager, but she had been interested in black history since 1997, when a provocative sign asking “Do you know your black history?” irked her so badly on her lunch break she thought about it all day and returned later to challenge the shop owners about it.

“I was quite offended because I thought of course I know my black history. I’m black. But just being black doesn’t mean you know your black history. Being black just means you’re black.” she said.

On entering the shop, she came across a workshop being run by Robin Walker, aka Black History Man, and one of the UK’s most pre-eminent African scholars.

“I joined up and learned a hell of a lot of stuff that I did not know,” she admitted.

“Black history isn’t just about slavery. When you’re small your whole world is your parents, and they’re black and then all you see is that all black people have been slaves. Well, that’s not true. That demoralises anybody.”

Under her mentor Mr Walker, she discovered, among other facts, that Egyptian civilisation was once black with rich cultural, engineering and scientific heritage.

A couple of the stops on the tour are the Eritrean embassy in Angel, and the nearby former ANC London headquarters at the height of Apartheid in South Africa. A roll-call of South African presidents have spent time there during the fight to achieve emancipation and the release of Nelson Mandela.

She is also fascinated by the history of the Keskidee Centre, once based in Gifford Street in King’s Cross, which was Britain’s first arts centre for the black community. Founded in 1971, it saw Bob Marley film the video to Is This Love, with a seven year old Naomi Campbell. It was closed in 1991 and turned into a church. In 2012 the building was gutted by a fire.

For more information about Ms Nanton’s tours, go to www.avrilswalksandtalks.co.uk