Stephen Bourne

Stephen Bourne (born 31 October 1957) is a British writer, film and social historian specialising in black culture. As noted by the BBC among others, Bourne "has discovered many stories that have remained untold for years".

Bourne was born in Camberwell, south-east London, and raised in Peckham. He attended Oliver Goldsmith Primary School from 1962 to 1969, St. Michael and All Angels Secondary Modern School from 1969 to 1974 and the Sixth Form of Archbishop Michael Ramsey School from 1974 to 1977. He graduated from the London College of Printing with a bachelor's degree in film and television in 1988, and in 2006 received a Master of Philosophy degree at De Montfort University on the subject of the representation of gay men in British Television Drama 1936–79.

After graduating in 1988, he was a research officer at the British Film Institute on a ground-breaking project that documented the history of black people in British television. The result was a two-part television documentary called Black and White in Colour (BBC 1992), directed by Isaac Julien, that is considered groundbreaking.

In 1991 Bourne was a founder member of the Black and Asian Studies Association. In 1999 he undertook pioneering work with Southwark Council and the Metropolitan Police as a voluntary independent adviser to the police. In 2008 he researched Keep Smiling Through – Black Londoners on the Home Front 1939–1945, an exhibition for the Cuming Museum in the London Borough of Southwark and that same year he worked as a historical consultant on the Imperial War Museum's War to Windrush exhibition.

Bonnie Greer, playwright and critic, says: "Stephen Bourne brings great natural scholarship and passion to a largely hidden story. He is highly accessible, accurate and surprising. You always walk away from his work knowing something that you didn't know, that you didn't even suspect".

In 1991, Bourne co-authored The Sun Shone on Our Side of the Street: Aunt Esther's Story with Esther Bruce (his adopted aunt), which was published by the Ethnic Communities Oral History Project (ECOHP). He has written books about significant Black personalities such as Elisabeth Welch, Ethel Waters, Evelyn Dove and Harold Moody, as well as about different aspects of the historical Black presence in Britain.

In 2014, Bourne's book Black Poppies: Britain's Black Community and the Great War was published by The History Press. Reviewing it in The Independent, Bernardine Evaristo said: "Until historians and cultural map-makers stop ignoring the historical presence of people of colour, books such as this one provide a powerful, revelatory counterbalance to the whitewashing of British history."

A contributor to the gay press for many years, Bourne was the film critic for Gay Times in the early 1990s, and in 1996 his acclaimed book Brief Encounters, a survey of gay cinema in Britain, was published. In 1992 he curated Out of the Archives, the first of many successful LGBT television retrospectives for BFI Southbank.

In 1995, in the London Borough of Southwark, Bourne was instrumental in setting up one of the first locally-based multi-agency forums to combat homophobic crime. Since 1999 he has been active in his community as an independent adviser to the Metropolitan Police.

In 2002 Bourne received the Metropolitan Police Volunteer Award for his work as independent adviser on critical incidents. It was presented to him by Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens at City Hall, London. In 2013 Bourne was nominated for a Southwark Heritage Blue Plaque for his work as a community historian and Southwark Police independent adviser. He came second with 1,025 votes. In June 2015, at Southwark's Unicorn Theatre, the Southwark Arts Forum presented Bourne with their Literature Award for Black Poppies. In May 2017, he was honoured at the 12th Screen Nation Awards with a special award for his years of work documenting the lives of black Britons in film and television. In 2017 he received an Honorary Fellowship from London South Bank University for his contribution to diversity.

In October 2019 Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo voted Bourne for her Black History Month hero on Facebook. She said: "Stephen Bourne is a hero of our history, who has published countless books, always accessible to all, on the hidden stories of our presence on these shores. Let's honour Stephen for quietly shining a light on our history."

Bourne's radio appearances have included Raising the Bar (2015) with Sir Lenny Henry, From Shame to Pride (2017), The Film Programme (2018), Last Word (2019), The Secret History of a School (2019), and Front Row (2019) all for BBC Radio 4; The Raw Pearl Bailey (2018) for BBC Radio 2; and Robert Elms Show (2019) for BBC Radio London. His television appearances include Black Divas (C4, 1996); American Masters - Paul Robeson: Here I Stand (1999); The One Show (BBC1, 2013); The Culture Show: Swingin' into the Blitz (BBC2, 2016) and Home Front Heroes (More4, 2016). In 2018 he was interviewed about his Evelyn Dove photograph collection for BBC1's Antiques Roadshow.

In 1993, for Salutations, Bourne received a Race in the Media award for Best Radio Documentary from the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). Salutations was a series which Bourne conceived and scripted for BBC Radio 2 that celebrated the achievements of black African, Caribbean and British singers and musicians from the 1930s to the 1960s. Subjects included Leslie Hutchinson, Edric Connor, Winifred Atwell, Reginald Foresythe, Evelyn Dove, Ken "Snakehips" Johnson, Ray Ellington, Cy Grant and Shirley Bassey. The following year Bourne received a second CRE award in the same category for Black in the West End, a celebration of black musical theatre in London's West End.

Bourne has been the recipient of two research grants for black British theatre from the Society for Theatre Research (2001) and a Wingate Scholarship (2011). He compiled a database of "Key Black Productions to 1975" for the Theatre Museum's publication Black and Asian Performance at the Theatre Museum: A User's Guide (2003). Bourne participated in Warwick University's Shakespeare symposium with the presentation "Beyond Paul Robeson...Black British Actors and Shakespeare 1930–1965" (July 2013) and the Royal National Theatre's Palimpsest Talk: Symposium - A Celebration of Black Women in Theatre (December 2017). Bourne was interviewed in the documentary Margins to Mainstream: The Story of Black Theatre in Britain (2012).

• The Sun Shone on Our Side of the Street: Aunt Esther's Story, ECOHP, 1991, ISBN 1871338077
• Brief Encounters: Lesbians and Gays in British Cinema 1930–71, Cassell, 1996, ISBN 0304332860
• Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British Film and Television, Cassell/Continuum, 2001, ISBN 0826455395
• Elisabeth Welch: Soft Lights and Sweet Music, Scarecrow Press, 2005, ISBN 0810854139
• Speak of Me As I Am: The Black Presence in Southwark Since 1600, Southwark Council, 2005, ISBN 0905849426
• Ethel Waters: Stormy Weather, Scarecrow Press, 2007, ISBN 0810859025
• Butterfly McQueen Remembered, Scarecrow Press, 2008, ISBN 081086018X
• Dr. Harold Moody, Southwark Council, 2008, ISBN 978-0-905849-43-0
• Mother Country: Britain's Black Community on the Home Front 1939–45, The History Press, 2010, ISBN 0752456105
• The Motherland Calls: Britain's Black Servicemen and Women 1939–1945, The History Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-7524-6585-2
• Esther Bruce: A Black London Seamstress, History and Social Action Publications, 2012, ISBN 978-0-9548943-7-5
• Black Poppies: Britain's Black Community and the Great War, The History Press, 2014, ISBN 075249760X
• Evelyn Dove: Britain's Black Cabaret Queen, Jacaranda Books, 2016, ISBN 9781909762350
• Fighting Proud: The Untold Story of the Gay Men Who Served in Two World Wars, I.B.Tauris, 2017/Bloomsbury Academic 2019, ISBN 978-1-350-14322-7
• War to Windrush: Black Women in Britain 1939-1948, Jacaranda Books, 2018, ISBN 9781909762855
• Black Poppies:Britain's Black Community and the Great War (2nd edition, revised and updated), The History Press, 2019, ISBN 978-0-7509-9082-0
• Playing Gay in the Golden Age of British Television, The History Press (November 2019), ISBN 978-0-7509-9013-4
• Under Fire: Black Britain in Wartime 1939-45, The History Press (forthcoming in August 2020)