Mike Phillips

Writer Mike Phillips came to Britain as a child and grew up in London. He was educated at the University of London and the University of Essex, and gained a Postgraduate Certificate of Education at Goldsmiths College, London.

He worked for the BBC as a journalist and broadcaster between 1972 and 1983 on television programmes including The Late Show and Omnibus, before becoming a lecturer in media studies at the University of Westminster. He has written full-time since 1992. His most recent novel, A Shadow of Myself (2000), is a thriller about a black documentary filmmaker working in Prague and a man who claims to be his brother.

Mike Phillips co-wrote Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (1998) to accompany a BBC television series telling the story of the Caribbean migrant workers who settled in post-war Britain. His book, London Crossings: A Biography of Black Britain (2001), is a series of interlinked essays and stories, a portrait of the city seen from locations as diverse as New York and Nairobi, London and Lodz, Washington and Warsaw.