British Author Alex Wheatle was born in 1963 to Jamaican parents living in London. He spent most of his childhood in a children's home, which he left at 14 to live in a hostel in Brixton. At 18, he was involved in the Brixton uprising and went to prison for 3 months. His second novel, East of Acre Lane, won the London New Writers Award (2000). In his latest novel The Dirty South Wheatle brilliantly evokes the temptations ofthe thug life for young black men growing up in London's Dirty South.Interview Alex Wheatle about the Brixton riots in 1981