BUREAU OF LOST CULTURE – Becoming (Pauline) Black (12/04/2025)

Whilst Margaret Thatcher was reshaping Britain and promoting her very own particular retrograde vision, in the urban jungle of Coventry, a young woman whose image couldn’t be more different than Maggie’s, was presenting a radically different vision of what it meant to be British.

Belinda Magnus, born on 23 October 1953 was given away as the baby of a white unmarried mother and an unknown black father. She was adopted by a white family and re-named Pauline Vickers. Growing up in a completely white neighbourhood as the only person of colour, she experienced first-hand the often prevalent racist attitudes of the time.

She came to the Bureau to talk about all that, how she overcame it, her life as a star of the 2-tone musical scene with her band Selecter, and how, along the way, she became PAULINE BLACK.

Image by Dean Chalkley